


Do They Know It's Christmas Time At All?

by Safiyabat



Series: Disintegration [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas, Demons, F/M, Gen, M/M, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5518376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/pseuds/Safiyabat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's first semester at Stanford has come to a close.  He doesn't have anywhere to go, but that's okay.  He's scored an incredibly prestigious internship working with the state prosecutor's office on a series of copycat killings modeled on a mass murder that took place almost thirty years ago, and he couldn't be happier.  </p><p>John has caught a rumor of a knife that can kill anything.  Thinking that it might be just the thing to help him in his quest to get revenge for Mary, he tears off to Missouri, leaving Dean at Pastor Jim's.  He has a temporary hunting partner in the mysterious T, a local hunter with area knowledge and nerves of solid steel.  </p><p>Pastor Jim would prefer that Dean rest and recuperate from his last hunt in Blue Earth, but he soon realizes that Dean needs action.  He finds Dean a hunt in distant California: an abandoned house experiencing a wide variety of bizarre phenomena that don't fit any pattern the Winchesters have ever seen before.  Unraveling it will take every bit of Dean's brain power, distracting him from his loneliness.  </p><p>Naturally, nothing goes according to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. O Little Town Of Bethlehem

            Sam leaned back and hit submit, a little smile playing around his face. With that one gesture, that simple push of a button, his first semester at Stanford officially drew to a close. He’d made it. It hadn’t been easy. He’d had to deal with a few adjustment issues around the transition to civilian life, and he’d had to deal with the more than a few aspects of his old life that just wouldn’t leave him alone. He’d hunted, alone, and he’d helped his family without their ever being the wiser.

            He’d almost died.

            _Almost doesn’t cut it, Sammy._ He could hear his father’s voice just as clear as if he was eight again, heading out for the first time with the double barrel. He’d been proud of himself for almost hitting the target for all of three seconds, before his dad had gotten into his face. _Almost isn’t going to save your brother. Almost will only get your brother killed, you understand me?_ He could still feel his father’s breath hot on his ear if he let himself.

            And in that, his father had been right. Almost didn’t count for much. Almost hitting a target wouldn’t save his brother, and a clutch of owl-men almost killing him hadn’t managed to stop him from finishing the semester.

            He wasn’t too worried about his grades. He’d kept up with his work, even during the long days he’d spent locked up in the hospital waiting for his body to knit itself back together. He had a few concerns, just enough to keep his stomach a little unsettled, but it wasn’t any worse than his usual grades-related anxiety. His most likely problem area was going to be the paper for the Theology 101 class; he’d had few opportunities to discuss or even explore the subject mater before showing up to Stanford and didn’t feel as though he was on such firm ground as he did in his other classes. Still, he should do okay.

            Of course, now that his last paper had been handed in, he had no idea what to do with himself. It wasn’t a feeling he’d had much experience with, and he didn’t think he liked it much. He had a couple of translation clients he could take care of, but none of them were urgent given the time of year. He had no current research cases as Taurus. Jim hadn’t sent him anything at all since he’d been hurt, and if the contacts he’d made through other cases had anything going on it wasn’t anything they needed his help with.

            As if on cue, someone knocked on his door. He didn’t have to look to know who it was. He got up and unlocked the door, letting Brady into the small room.   “Hey, Sam.” The blond grinned and closed the door behind himself. “You all set with exams yet?”

            “Yeah, I had my last one this morning, in Hebrew. We’ll see how I did, but I’m feeling confident.” He locked the door and returned to his desk. He wasn’t going to let himself get worked up, not this time. “How about you?”

            “Yeah, I finished O-Chem just a few minutes ago. Let me tell you, I am not sorry to see the back of that one!” He shuddered. “You know, all through grade school and high school and all that I thought I was smart, you know? That’s what they kept telling me. ‘Oh, Tyson, you’re so smart! Oh, Tyson, with brains like yours you can make it anywhere!’ Then I get here and it’s like I got hit with a two by four.”

            Sam winced. He’d been hit by a two by four. Not fun. “Yikes.”

            “I feel like I’m only going to get by with the skin of my teeth.” He flopped down onto the bed in a sad little blond heap.

            “Brady – you’re going to be fine. You are. You’re brilliant. Everyone else here got told the exact same thing that you were told.” He reached out and put a hand on Brady’s shoulder, and maybe that was a little awkward given how different things had been since Sam had gotten hurt but he couldn’t let Brady suffer alone. “You’re every bit as brilliant as everyone else in your classes, buddy. And trust me – you’ve been getting tutoring from Meli. She wouldn’t waste her time if she didn’t think you were capable of going every bit as far as she is, and she’s pretty damn likely to go to far. Okay?”

            Brady leaned into his touch, which gave Sam all kinds of warm feelings deep in his gut. He shouldn’t let himself think that way, he knew better, but self-discipline could only carry him so far when he could feel Brady’s warm skin underneath his hand. “You’re the best, Sam. I’ll have my mom call you when my grades come in, you can explain it all.”

            Sam chuckled. “You’re going to be fine, dude. Trust me. You’re going to rock your first semester.”

            The blond rested his head on Sam’s shoulder for a minute, and looked pretty happy to do so, before he jerked his head up. “Oh, crap, I’m sorry. Is that your bad shoulder?”

            Sam counted backwards from ten, in Akkadian. “It’s fine, Brady. I’m fine.”

            “The doctor said you’d still be in rough shape.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You should still be in a sling!”

            “But I’m not.” Sam rolled his eyes but confined his frustration to that. A guy like Brady couldn’t understand the Winchester way. Sam would have given anything to not understand the Winchester way himself, but he couldn’t help the way he’d been raised. Maybe he had a little residual discomfort in the shoulder or in his ribs, but he didn’t register it anymore. He could use it, he had a full range of motion, and that was enough. At least no one was expecting him to go out and take on a werewolf or anything stupid like that. “I’m fine, Brady. I’ve always been a fast healer, and I’m sure not going to question how or why but I’m not going to complain about being able to go out for a run this quick.”

            All color drained from Brady’s face. “Are you kidding me? You went for a run? You should still be on bed rest, Sam!”

            “I’ve only got one use for that bed, and there haven’t been any takers,” Sam muttered. “Look, the doctor said that I’m making a very fast recovery, faster than she’s ever seen before. All my scans have come back fine, everything is coming along normally. I’m fine. I can do almost everything I did before, and I’m getting closer every day. She says there’s no reason I can’t do normal college things now.”

            Brady shook his head. “Sam, I don’t know what kind of macho crap you’ve been raised with, but you need to take care of yourself. Just because it’s not bothering you now doesn’t mean it’s not going to bother you ten or twenty or thirty years down the road if you don’t let it heal right.”

            Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “At the same time, I can’t live like some kind of anchorite, man. I’m not going to get any better, physically or mentally, if I stay locked up in my room like Rapunzel.”

            Brady had opened his mouth to respond o that, but he stopped himself short. “Rapunzel?”

            He laughed a little. “Told you I was cracking up.”

            “And here was me thinking you’d look good in the dress.” Brady nudged him with his shoulder. “I know. I’m hovering and obsessing. I guess I’m just… It’s like, you told me what your father was like, how he trained you and everything. And then I saw it. With that action-hero stuff, right?”

            Sam swallowed. How was he going to cover this one up? “I mean yeah, he wanted us to be ready, but he didn’t train us specifically for owl things swarming from the sky, no.”

            “That would be oddly far-sighted,” Brady said, nodding his head. How he managed to keep a straight face would remain one of the mysteries for the ages. “But like, he taught you all that other… stuff?”

            Sam blushed. “More my brother, really.” He squirmed. He didn’t need to be thinking about Dean right now.

            “This would be the same brother that called you up, said your name once, breathed heavily enough to sound like an obscene caller and then hung up.” Brady frowned. “That brother?”

            Sam sighed. “It’s complicated.”

            Brady didn’t say anything. That was a good thing. He didn’t get it. Even calling him was a big deal for Dean; one more thing that someone like Brady wouldn’t understand and shouldn’t be able to understand. After a minute, Sam cleared his throat. “So how long before you have to go back to Orange County?”

            Brady groaned, glad of the change of subject. “Ugh. Two days. I’m not ready. It’s like I’ve had a few months of freedom and now I’ve got to go back for a month of being a kid again, you know?”

            Sam didn’t know, but he didn’t say anything about it. Instead, he grinned. “Ah, they’ll be happy to have you home. It’ll be good to be there, too, right? Have someone else to do your laundry for you for once?”

            Brady laughed. “You’re still laughing at me because of that time I turned all of my whites blue.”

            “I’m still laughing at you because of that time you turned all of your whites blue.” Sam huffed and turned away.

            “What about you?” Brady looked up at him, face hopeful. “Are you going to go stay with that priest up to Minnesota?”

            Sam grimaced. Tonight was turning out to be a lot more of a minefield than he’d wanted. He’d just wanted to spend a little time with the guy he wasn’t technically dating. “I… um, my brother’s there right now, so I can’t go there.” He swallowed and forced a smile. “But it’s cool, because I kind of expected that. I applied for this internship through the law department, and I got accepted. I’m going to be staying here over break.”

            Brady shook his head. “That sounds… um. That sounds kind of isolated, honestly. Even most of the international students are going home.”

            “Nah. It won’t be so bad. I’ll be working every day with investigators from the state Attorney General’s office, so it’s not like I’ll be hiding out in here feeling sorry for myself all day. And believe me, this is the chance of a lifetime.” He reached behind him, glad to have the chance to focus on something positive at last. “It’s the Nicholas Lange case.”

            Brady blinked and shook his head. “I don’t follow.”

            Sam grinned. “Lange was a mass murderer from back in like, 1973. He up and killed a family of six in their beds one night. It looks like he chose them at random, or because they drove a big car or something. Left a note, scrawled in blood on the master bedroom walls, talking about people who ‘despoil the Father’s creation.’”

            Brady made a face. “And you’re excited about this.”

            “Well yeah!” He rubbed his hands together, warming to his subject. “I mean, it was huge news in the area at the time and it was right here in Palo Alto. Yeah I’m excited!”

            “Oh God. You’ve got a thing for serial killers, don’t you.” Brady clutched at his stomach. I knew you were too good to be true.”

            “What?” Sam pulled away. “It’s a legitimate piece of local history!”

            “Dude. It’s creepy.” Brady gave him a peck on the cheek. “It’s okay. I’m a big _Sailor Moon_ fan myself.”

            Sam silently repeated the words. “Seriously?”

            “What can I say? The storylines are compelling. And hey, you’ve got a serial killer fetish, you have no grounds to criticize.”

            “No judgment, just surprised.” Sam put his hands up. “Just surprised, that’s all. But anyway, it’s kind of a dream internship, and it’s paid plus I get credit, so I’m sure not going to complain about spending Christmas here.” He grinned. “Plus, Pastor Jim is many things but an expert chef is none of them.”

            “You’re so not an English major.” Brady laughed. “I don’t know. I’d rather you weren’t alone right now. I mean after everything, Sam. You’re a hero, you shouldn’t be alone at Christmastime.”

            Sam felt his lips twist a little and fought to keep the bitterness from them. “Brady, look,” he said. “We never really did the Christmas thing in my family anyway. It won’t be the first time I was alone on the twenty-fifth of December, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last. I don’t really miss it.” He made sure he caught Brady’s eyes. “Except when people point it out.”

            His friend huffed out a little laugh. “Point taken, Winchester. I apologize. And this project of yours – it sounds like it’s a good deal. Paid internship that also offers course credit? Pretty sweet.”

            “Almost too good to be true.” Sam ran his hands through his hair. It was almost too good to be true, and anything that sounded like that good a deal couldn’t be real. There had to be some kind of hidden catch. Nothing good just shined down on a Winchester.

            Except so far, here at Stanford, things had been good. The scholarship had sounded too good to be true too, and it was every bit as real as it had sounded. Sure he had to work his ass off to keep it, but it was his. “So what’ll you be doing while you’re with your parents?” he asked, genuinely curious.

            Brady rolled his eyes, flopping down onto the bed. “My mother wants a spa day. A spa day! She has a daughter to take her to the spa, why can’t Janice take her?”

            Sam scratched his head. “I had a job in a spa once. It wasn’t that bad,” he offered.

            Brady sat up. “You did?”

            “Yeah. I mean it was just for a few weeks, with a fake ID and everything, but I worked there as a masseur. Trying to help the family out, you know.” Sam squirmed. The spa had been haunted, and his father had sent him in as a decoy, but Brady didn’t need to know about any of that.

            “It wasn’t all, like, slathering mud on your face or stuff like that?”

            “Nah. I mean there was plenty of that if that’s what you’re into, but that’s not the main thing. Your skin is fine, Brady. It doesn’t need help.” He smirked. “Although I guess it doesn’t hurt to take care of it before you start to feel the effects of all this California sun.”

            “Are you trying to butter me up, Winchester?”

            Sam blushed. “Is it that obvious?”

            “Maybe a little.” Brady chuckled and beckoned Sam over.

            Sam had a moment of fear as he sat down on the bed beside Brady. They hadn’t always had Ginny between them when they’d been together but she’d been a part of their undefined little relationship, even when she’d been off doing her own thing. Now Ginny was gone, a ghost between them even though she was still alive. Maybe Brady had only been using Sam’s injuries as an excuse to extricate himself gracefully from a union that had never been more than a way to spice up his fling with Ginny. After all, he still wasn’t “dating” Sam, was still firmly in the closet as far as school was concerned.

            The blond grabbed Sam’s chin and brought him in for a chaste kiss. “You’re thinking too much,” he said in a soft voice, barely above a whisper. “You sure you’re ready for this?”

            Sam took a deep breath. He was being ridiculous. This was the kind of thing Coryell had told him about, warned him to stop doing. _Self-sabotage_ , the therapist had called it, and he’d been right. He knew _why_ his brain spun itself into a tizzy. He had very little practical experience of how normal human interactions worked, and he was always struggling to hold onto some connection. He got it, intellectually. He just needed to get the rest of himself to catch up. “I’m ready,” he promised Brady, not having to force the smile.

            Brady stayed with him that night, rather than heading back to his own room. Getting to sleep with his lover’s arms around him was a rare luxury. Sometimes, back before the owl-men attacked, he’d shared a bed for an hour or two with an casual partner, but Brady rarely stayed the night. Somehow that seemed like a better Christmas present than anything he could have expected.

 

John

 

            John lifted his shotgun. Dean was almost into position. Part of John couldn’t help but be frustrated with that “almost.” There shouldn’t be any “almosts” anymore. They’d been doing this for nineteen years now and the one unknown, the one wild card was gone now. They should be moving like they were one mind in two bodies.

            The rest of him knew how absurd that was. Nothing, literally nothing, worked like that. At the moment Dean was fighting an exceptionally nasty vengeful spirit, the ghost of a possessive lover who’d murdered his girl here at the toy factory a good hundred years ago. According to the lore, both spirits still haunted the factory, rendering the facility completely unfit for any other purpose. Only the guy seemed to be at all vengeful, and it was the man who was currently hurling old machine bits at John’s son’s head, but they both had to go.

            The point of which was, Dean was entirely on board with getting rid of the ghosts. He’d done everything humanly possible to adhere to his father’s timetable and plan, he’d been the perfect obedient soldier, and he still wasn’t in position because said murderous ghost wasn’t cooperating. He was proving to be a much more intelligent spirit than the lore indicated, which meant that both of the Winchesters needed to step up their research game.

            They’d relied too heavily on Sammy for that, John knew.

            John had asked Dean to reach out to Taurus, but both Dean and Jim had kicked up such a fuss about it that the hunter had backed off. Apparently the guy was hurt, or sick, or something, John didn’t know. If Taurus had been his son, nothing short of a coma would have been enough to get him out of working, but both of them were set on babying this guy and nothing that they said or did was going to get them to budge.

            Well, that was fine. Winchesters shouldn’t rely on anyone else anyway. Perfect self-sufficiency. That was the mantra he’d always preached, and it had been wrong to pin so much on a stranger in the first place. Especially when he’d already known that they guy was a shirker.

            Finally, Dean managed to wrestle the ghost into position. This case was tricky. The killer had been hanged and then cremated, unusually enough for the time, and it had taken some work to figure out what he was attached to. It turned out that the guy’s tether object was a blood-soaked bullet, one of the bullets with which he’d killed his girl. According to testimony from the trial, he’d had some kind of an open cut on his hand or arm or something, and that had caused this whole mess after their death.

            John was going to have to destroy the bullet. Consecrated iron should do the job safely enough. They’d know for sure if it didn’t. Ghosts usually went out in a pretty spectacular fashion. He just hoped he got to it before Dean got too beat up.

            Now! John pulled the trigger. Dean jerked his head back just in time as the shells passed through his foe and met the indentation in the wall that had come from the killer’s bullet a hundred years ago. The killer’s face twisted into a snarl of hatred and he advanced on John just as his form erupted into flame. A second eruption, across the machine room floor, was accompanied by a wail that shook the shattered windows.

            John relaxed and lowered his gun. “You okay, Dean?”

            His son’s grin could have lit up half of Iowa. “Never better, sir.” It was half a lie. Dean’s handsome face, so like Mary’s, was already darkened by a smattering of bruises and he held one of his arms close to his chest. John knew, though, that he wasn’t processing the pain yet. Dean was still riding the adrenaline high. “Head out?”

            John spared him half a grin. “Let’s head out. We can get ourselves cleaned up, maybe hit that roadhouse I saw in the next county.”

            Dean’s eyes lit up. “You’re singing my song, sir.”

            John knew that he should probably feel bad about that. Mary hadn’t wanted this kind of life for her child. Every time they’d passed a place like this she’d averted her eyes with a kind of shudder, and it hadn’t been because she was some kind of teetotaler. He felt a pang at that; sometimes he thought that Mary would be disgusted if she knew what he’d done to them, what had become of their perfect little family.

            At the same time, she hadn’t chosen to be murdered. It was up to him to keep the world safe from the thing that had killed her, him and his sons. Maybe Mary wouldn’t have liked the fact that Dean thought the scent of stale beer and half-rancid peanuts as comforting, but it brought them closer to the thing that had killed her and it put money in their pockets.

            They drove back to the motel and changed into slightly less grimy clothes before heading back out. It was getting to be time to do laundry; maybe they’d swing back up to Blue Earth and borrow Pastor Jim’s laundry room. Not that he wanted to be beholden to the preacher any more than he already was, but if he could avoid spending more on trivialities than he had to he could spend more on the hunt.

            Besides, Christmas was coming, and it would be nice to pick something up for Adam, and maybe for his mother too.

            The roadhouse was one of those places that didn’t even have a sign, just neon beer ads in the windows and a row of old beaters out front. If the weather were better those would mostly be motorcycles. John led them in and no one gave them a second glace; that was good. Once inside, he decided he’d try his luck at pool while Dean went for poker.

            The place had a dartboard. It looked like people were putting up higher stakes than he usually saw on darts. This was another one of those times when they could have really used Sammy. He was shit at poker and worse at pool, but hell if he couldn’t throw anything at any target with an accuracy that terrified even John, ever since the day he was born.

            John wasn’t going to let his lazy, no-good, ungrateful son kill his buzz. So what if they were leaving money on the table – or dartboard, as it were? He and Dean didn’t need to foot the bill for any of Sammy’s shenanigans anymore. He settled in for a good quiet hustle.

            That good quiet hustle led to something more exciting as a leggy blonde waitress took an interest in the game, making sure that his drink stayed filled all night and that he knew to make sure to let her know if she needed anything. She got done with work at two, she said, and made sure he knew that. Did he maybe want to come home and show her what else he could do with a stick?

            He grinned and sent Dean a text. He could find his own way back to the motel in the morning. Given that there was a waitress siting in Dean’s lap, John didn’t think his son would mind having the room to himself.

            He spent a very nice night with the waitress, he thought her name might have been Darlene, and made her breakfast in the morning before he left. She dropped him off at the motel, where he found Dean still in the shower. Damn, but that boy took longer to wash up than most women he knew. It wasn’t like washing his hair should have taken all that long. Maybe it was all the product he kept rubbing into it. Lord knew the kind had a vain streak to him; liked to look good and preen for the ladies. For all his weak ways, Sam had never had that about him at least. As far as Sam had been concerned, clothes were for covering the body. They did not “emphasize my pecs and shoulders” or anything else like that, thank you very much.

            Of course, Sam hadn’t ever really gotten to pick out his own clothes, so there was that.

            “Dean!” John yelled. “Get a move on, I want to be out of here before check-out time!”

            “Yes, sir!”

            To his credit, Dean did hurry it up a bit and slip out of the shower. He came out with the towel wrapped around his waist and an apologetic grimace on his face. “Sorry, sir. I wanted to make sure Sarah got back to her car safely.”

            John grunted. He supposed he couldn’t fault that logic, after all. “How much did you get last night?” he asked instead.

            “About a grand, sir.” Dean shrugged. “Not too bad for one night’s work.” He stalked over to his duffel, completely unselfconscious about how much of his body he was displaying. He’d never cared about that kind of thing; they lived in too close quarters to get to have that kind of privacy. Dean had a nice body, it was true. John supposed that if he was going to have that kind of vanity, it was good that he could back it up. “Do we have a new case already?”

            “Nah.” A grand wasn’t bad for a night’s work at all. John had only made about four hundred at pool. People tended to open their wallets a little wider when it came to poker, and of course you had more players chipping in. When you looked at things that way, he’d done just as well as Dean. Not that he should be looking at things that way, no, that was silly. He wasn’t in a competition with his boy. “I just want to head back to Blue Earth, maybe get a little laundry done.”

            Dean frowned. “Didn’t we just come from there?” He slid his briefs on underneath the towel and then let the towel fall to the ground to finish dressing.

            “Yeah. We did, at Thanksgiving. Now our clothes are all kind of ripe and we’re not that far away.” He shrugged his shoulders and packed up his bag. “My visit to Jim got cut kind of short last time, on account of his friend almost dying and everything, so I wouldn’t mind getting a chance to catch up with him a bit either.”

            Dean hesitated, but then he shrugged. “Pastor Jim’s a cool enough guy, I guess.”

            John stilled. “Did he give you a hard time about your – about _him?_ ”

            “No, sir.” Dean met his eyes, perfectly honest. “He knows better. It’s just a little weird, you know? Being in the rectory without him. I keep looking for a ghost, except there isn’t one. There wouldn’t be, in Pastor Jim’s house.”

            John sighed. “I know it’s hard, son.” He put a hand on Dean’s bare shoulder. “It’s hard on you. I wish he hadn’t put you through this. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”

            Dean managed a weak little grin. “I know sir. You did the best you could. I get that. I think if I’d tried harder with him, coddled him less, he’d have turned out better, but –“

            John’s throat threatened to close. “Dean, no. It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid yourself. I think it must have been a problem with Sam, with Sam himself, that made him the way he is. We could have eased up on him, we could have ridden him right into the ground, and he was always going to turn out rotten.”

            Dean flinched when John said “rotten,” like John had stabbed him, but he straightened up. “Yes, sir.” He drew his tee shirt on. “What do you say to coffee, sir? I know you already had breakfast.”

            John laughed. Dean was a good kid. Always bounced back. “You know that how?”

            “I can smell the bacon on you.”

            They grabbed coffee before heading out on the two-hour trip north, back to Pastor Jim’s.

            Jim didn’t seem at all surprised to see them, which made John suspect that Dean had called while they were driving. Well, that was okay. John hadn’t authorized it, and John did like to have the upper hand when he met up with people, but Jim wasn’t so much “people” as he was family. Who knew, maybe Jim and Dean had reached some sort of understanding? Either way, the priest met them at the back door of the rectory with a big smile on his face, a far cry from his expression he last time Jim had seen him. “Well well, if it isn’t the Winchesters! It’s good to see you!”

            “Good to see you too, Jim. Glad to hear your friend’s doing better.” John barely restrained a smirk when a shadow fell over the priest’s face. Something was definitely going on with regards to that friend of Jim’s, that supposed parishioner. Maybe they were an old flame of Jim’s?

            “He is. In body, anyway. I’m not thrilled about leaving him to spend Christmas alone, but some things can’t be helped. He says he doesn’t mind, anyway.” Jim looked out the window for a moment.

            John rolled his eyes and put his bag down. “Christmas is for civilians, Jim. Come on. It’s nice for some people to get to do the whole turkey and stuffing and presents under the tree thing, but it’s not for everyone. I mean honestly, I can’t see why anyone wants that stuff. It’s just another guilt-tripping holiday to try to pressure people into spending money they don’t have and then causing hurt feelings all around.”

            Once upon a time, Christmas had been important to him. It hadn’t been a big part of his own life once his dad had taken off, but Mary had loved the holiday and so he loved it too. Throughout their long courtship and their ten years of wedded bliss, he’d dutifully done the tree thing, and the gifts, and the decorations that made him want to gouge out his own eyes from tackiness sometimes. Once she’d died Christmas had seemed like a pathetic joke.

            He’d tried. He’d tried for Dean’s sake, for a while, but the hunt had taken up too much of his time. How could he justify spending a pile of cash on fucking wrapping paper when people were dying? The money was better spent on silver bullets and consecrated iron. Worse, by the time that Sam was all of eight his attempts just seemed pathetic even in the boy’s eyes. Sam had just turned away from him, stopped even asking him to try to make it home for Christmas.

            Instead of “You’ll be home for Christmas, won’t you, Dad?” it had become, “You know it breaks Dean’s heart when you’re not here for Christmas.” And that had just about eroded the last sentimentality John might have had for the holiday.

            Somehow, seeing both the priest and his son stare at him with horrified eyes, he didn’t think that would be the right thing to say right now.

            “Oddly enough, the patient in question is a civilian.” Jim’s mouth tightened and his hands balled into fists. “But there’s nothing I can do about it, so it will have to be okay, won’t it?” He seemed to force himself to relax, shoulders loosening up with a shake. “Either way, John, I’m glad to have you here.”

            John and Dean were soon settled into their traditional rooms. Dean got to work on the laundry, yet another area in which John felt the lack of Sam pretty severely. Sam had been the best at laundry duty. John and Dean never quite got things as clean as Sam did, what with his fussy nature and his obsession with cleanliness. Still Dean was better than nothing, and a damn sight better than doing it himself, and so John left him to it.

            In the meantime, he sat down with Jim and shot the breeze. He already knew that the thing out in California had been owl-men, but getting more details out of Jim was absolutely useful. Who knew that the bastards could form flocks? They talked about some of their other recent takedowns, too. Jim hadn’t gotten around to the Mason City case, he’d been too busy with other projects to worry about that one, but he had just recently taken down a witch using her powers to make people fall in “love” – essentially a date rape spell. That had been over in New Ulm, although her dirty work had been seen all over southern Minnesota, and Jim still had a few scars from that one. Bobby Singer had taken on a shifter up in North Dakota, travelling well out of his own range to take that one on.

            Dean joined them when he could, and they had a companionable evening made more companionable by a few beers and some pizza. They went to bed comfortable and happy, and John congratulated himself on a job well done. Dean would get over this thing he had, this grief and loss over Sam soon enough.

            The next morning, though, John got a call from Travis Lea. Travis spoke in a harsh whisper. “Johnny? Johnny, it’s Travis, from down in Missouri. I need to talk to you.”

            John snorted into his coffee. Travis always tried to sound like he was imparting a secret for the ages or something, when mostly he wanted to talk about the weather. “Figured that’s why you called me, Travis.”

            The other hunter laughed at that. “Good point, Winchester. Good point. Listen, I met up with this guy down here in Missouri. One of those backwoods types, crusty, beard that you could hide a whole flock of ducks in?”

            John nodded. He knew the type. “Okay. Tends to come with the territory, being a hunter.” They tended to shop in a lot of the same places, for one thing. They tended to hide from a lot of the same authorities, for another.

            “This one had a story to tell. He was talking about some kind of a knife, said it could kill anything. It’s old, real old. Made from a donkey’s jawbone old.”

            John opened his mouth to retort, but he shut it again as a distant Sunday-school memory penetrated years of angry atheism. “You’re not saying…”

            “I’m saying, Johnny. I mean I don’t know how real it is, but it seems awfully specific to be that much of a hoax, you know? It seems like the kind of thing that would be real useful once you go up against whatever it is what killed your woman.”

            John took a deep breath. Mary hadn’t just been “his woman,” she’d been his reason for living. A guy like Travis couldn’t understand that, though. “Your source, is he for real?”

            “Maybe. Usually pans out.” Travis took a deep breath. “Johnny, this ain’t something you’re going to want to go chasing after on your own. It’s dangerous.”

            “No, I’d need backup.”   John tugged at his hair. Who could he call on? Maybe that Gordon Walker kid, although he might have been a little green for that kind of game.

            “No problem, Johnny. I got a hunter raring to go. I’d go with you myself except I busted my leg last week. But T, T’ll be just fine.”

            John didn’t even have to think about it. If he had a chance to take down the thing that had killed his Mary, he had to chase it. “Tell me when and where.”

 

Dean

 

            Dean wasn’t at all surprised when his father tore out of the rectory, socks trailing out of his still-open duffel behind him and not a word of explanation. He might have been disappointed, of course. He might have been devastated. But he wasn’t surprised.

            “Now what do you suppose caused that?” Jim scratched at the side of his head, sipping at his mug of coffee.

            “Lead on the thing that killed Mom.” He sighed. “He’ll be back when he can. If it doesn’t pan out, or if he gets hurt.” Dean slumped into his own cup. “It’s happened before.”

            “At Christmas?” Jim kicked the draft blocker back into place.

            “Evil doesn’t observe Jesus’ birthday, padre.”

            Jim grinned. “Well, the Savior was most likely born sometime in –“

            Dean held up a hand. “You sound like my brother.”

            “I’ll take that as a complement.” The priest sat down. “How’ve you been, Dean? I mean really?”

            Dean sighed. “I’m fine, PJ. Thanks for asking, but really. I’m fine.” He grinned. “It’s a weird time of year, you know?”

            His friend nodded. “Most families experience some tension around the holidays. It’s normal to have a bit of anxiety or depression this time of year.”

            Dean glared. He didn’t have any kind of depression. He’d just said he was fine, damn it. “What’s Sammy doing for Christmas? Don’t they kick the kids out of the dorms for the holidays so they can fumigate them?”

            Jim raised an eyebrow. “You seem to know a lot about it for someone who’s never been to college.”

            Dean flipped his collar and widened his stance. “Hey. I don’t have to sit through a bunch of dumbass classes about the meaning of a leaf or whatever to take advantage of college girls.” He bit his lip. “That came out wrong.”

            “I don’t think it did.” Jim grinned a little. “Anyway, most of the time yes, they do prefer that students move out of the dorms during the winter break, but that’s not always a possibility and there’s a process in place for your brother. He’s been accepted into an internship that will give him course credit and a paycheck for the duration.”

            “Huh.” Dean gave a slow nod of his head. “That’s Sammy. Always resourceful.”

            “That he is.” Jim looked over at him. “Have you spoken to him?”

            “Uh, once.” Now Dean looked away, face hot, and tugged at his collar. “I mean, yeah. I called him.” Not that Dean was able to get more than one word out. And then he’d hung up in a flurry of humiliation and grief and relief. “He hasn’t called me back though.”

            “Maybe he doesn’t want you to get in trouble with your father.” Jim sat back in his chair and turned his mug around in his hands. “The last thing he wants is to be a problem for you.”

            “The only problem he is for me,” Dean sulked, kicking the floor under his chair like he used to when he was a little kid, “is that he’s not here with me doing what he’s supposed to do anymore. He should’ve been there to help distract that ghost.”

            “Dean, if he’d stayed with your father he’d be dead by now and you’d be in the same position you’re in now.” Jim’s face softened, even if his words were harsh. “You wouldn’t be able to reach out and call him when you wanted to hear his voice. That’s the only difference.”

            “He’d have knuckled under eventually.” Dean shook his head. Jim couldn’t understand it, but he’d always favored Sam. He didn’t have a whole host of supernatural uglies looking for him. “If he’d stayed with me, that whole thing with the owl men wouldn’t have happened.”

            “It would have been something else. Probably himself, Dean. He hated life, when he was with your father. He loved you, but he hated the way you lived.” Jim sipped from his coffee. “Anyway. I don’t think we’re going to agree on this, so maybe we should change the subject. Looks like that ghost tossed you around a little bit.”

            Dean waved a hand. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.” He tried to grin, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe what the priest had said. Would Sam have really hurt himself if he’d stayed with them? No, that couldn’t be true. Sure their life was hard, but Sammy wouldn’t have just checked out like that.

            Except he’d found a different way to get out. So maybe… No, Dean couldn’t think about that. “Are there any cases around here?”

            Jim laughed. “You know there’s a hunter in town. Right here.” He pressed his hands to his chest.

            “I know, PJ. I just… I don’t like to sit idle.” He didn’t like to sit idle. He especially didn’t like to sit idle when he had his brother on the brain, especially not at Christmas. “I’ll start looking for something.”

            The priest sighed and put a hand on his arm. “I’ll tell you what, Dean. You help me out around here and let the bruises fade a little. I’ve got a few things to do around the rectory that are definitely two-man jobs. In return, I’ll help you find a project.”

            Dean hesitated. This sounded like one of those things his dad’s friends tried to do sometimes, to try to get him to not hunt for a while. At the same time, he’d been working pretty hard lately. Maybe it was okay to take a little break. It wasn’t like Dad had given him any specific jobs or orders, after all. “You’ve got a deal, sir.”

            True to his word, Jim did have some fairly heavy-duty tasks around the rectory that needed doing. It wasn’t that the priest was some kind of fainting violet, far from it. Pastor Jim was a hunter and just as good with a stake or a blade or a club as he was with a rosary and a holy book. Some tasks just couldn’t be done without four hands, and Dean was more than happy to help out. Jim had helped Sammy out, after all. Kept Sammy safe while he lay in his hospital bed. Dean owed him for that, never mind all of the food and lodging he’d given all of the Winchesters over the years.

            After a couple of days, Jim started to look for jobs. Finally, he came to Dean with something. “Alright. This one is a little weird. Definitely not a simple salt-and-burn. You’re going to need all your brains for this.”

            Dean winced. He knew he didn’t exactly give good value for money in that department. “Are you sure I’m your guy, then?”

            “Positive. There’s backup around there if need be.” Jim waved a hand.

            “Not Sam.” Dean put his hands on the table and met the priest’s eyes.

            “Sam is still recovering from his injuries,” Jim said, without flinching. “Even if he weren’t out of hunting – and he’s out, believe me – I wouldn’t ask him to play backup on anything right now. His doctors told me he wouldn’t be up to more than walking between classes until spring.”

            Dean snorted. “And they think he’s going to listen?” But he relaxed anyway. As long as Pastor Jim didn’t intend on forcing him to work with Sam, he might be able to pull this off. Working with Sam would just be too much. Sam had abandoned them; he couldn’t be trusted at his back now, no matter how much he’d helped them from afar. And no matter that he’d jumped in to help their dad in person, either.

            “Well, they don’t know him like we do, but he’s got people looking out for him now. They won’t let him push himself before he’s ready. And since we’re both agreed that he’s not suitable backup on this, it’s not an issue.” Jim gave him a saccharine smile. “I do have other contacts out there, you know. Now. Do you want to know the details of the case or no?”

            Dean chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it would make sense to have some clue what’s going on.”

            Jim chuckled. “Okay. So this is out in Palo Alto, but it shouldn’t have anything to do with your brother. We’re looking at a house that’s experiencing some very unusual phenomena. The site’s been abandoned for a good twenty-nine years, and ever since then people have been reporting bizarre occurrences. We’re talking shifts in reality, faces melting right off, people disappearing and never being seen again. There’s sometimes a fine dusting of sulfur, sometimes a weird smell of ozone. And sometimes just blood, covering an entire room with no indication of any body.”

            “Yikes!” Dean grimaced. “Some of that sounds like fairly typical poltergeist stuff but some of it sounds like something else.”

            Jim nodded. “I guess that the sulfur sounds vaguely demonic, but there aren’t a lot of other indicators of demonic activity. The other stuff, though – that’s pretty out-there.”

            “So… research and report?”

            Jim grinned at him. “You can probably figure out how to kill just about anything we can identify, son. Not the demonic, there’s no way to kill a demon, but anything else you should be okay with.”

            “I’m not even sure that demons exist, Pastor Jim.” Dean shook his head. His father didn’t believe in demons. Sammy did, and he knew that Jim did, but Dean – well, his dad had never steered him wrong. He had faith.

            “Then don’t worry about it. This might be some kind of dark fae thing. I don’t know. If it is, you know how to handle it.”

            “Iron, salt, sugar.” Dean ticked off the items on his fingers.

            “And if it’s a pagan god?”

            “Usually some kind of wooden stake dipped in the blood of some kind of animal. I’ll call you or Bobby Singer for specifics if I can figure out who the god of brown acid is.”

            Pastor Jim clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. You can head out tomorrow; I think you’ll be okay until then.”

            Dean did some research into the house once he’d packed up and checked his Baby over. The house had been the site of some kind of weird mass murder back in the early seventies, it looked like the killer had tried to channel his inner Manson or something, but that wasn’t a big deal. They saw serial killer crap all the time and most people were amazed to learn how rarely that stuff turned into hauntings. It did happen every once in a while, but most of the dead who made up their bread and butter came from much less sensational cases.

            Maybe there was something about this case, something about the background that made it exceptional. He couldn’t find anything in one night, although he did learn that the subdivision in which the home had been built had been constructed not on a native burial ground but on top of an old potter’s field. Apparently the city hadn’t bothered to relocate the remains, just had the developer build right over them. That was usually a recipe for problems right there. He made a note of it.

            Another possible issue was that an old mission church had been demolished to make way for the subdivision. When Dean managed to dig up the old map that included the church and compared it to the new map of the neighborhood, he found that the poltergeist house had been built right on top of the church site. In essence, the builders had desecrated sacred ground to create their mini-palaces for the wealthy. The combination of the destroyed potter’s field and the desecrated church could well have been a catalyst, a perfect storm.

            Of course, if Sammy had been here he’d have found all of this crap out in like three seconds, plus where every single victim was buried. But he wasn’t here.

            Still, Dean left the next morning with a good feeling in his heart. He was out there on the open road, doing what he did best: saving people and hunting things. He had a great new puzzle to work through, one that would hopefully distract him enough to forget about the fact that he was spending Christmas alone for the first time ever. Maybe Sammy wouldn’t be adequate backup, but Dean would still be in the same place as his brother, the same town. Once everything was done he could peek in, verify with his own two eyes that Sam was recovering from what Jim made sound like truly horrific injuries.

            The drive took about three days. Dean could probably have done it in two, but he hit some snow in Utah and he wanted to play it cautious. Besides, he was on his own and this case didn’t have a schedule. Despite the occasional dumbass who went into the place on a dare, people weren’t actively dying and the bathtubs full of blood seemed to be mostly illusion. He could take his time, pick up a poker game here or a cocktail waitress there.   He was his own man, for now anyway, and that kind of freedom could be intoxicating.

            His father didn’t call. That nagged at the back of his mind, like the seam on ill-fitting jeans.

            When he got to California he had to admit, much as he hated it, that he could see the appeal. Here he was, maybe ten days before Christmas, and the worst people had to do was throw on a hoodie. If he’d gone down to southern California he probably could have gotten away with shorts, not that Dean Winchester did shorts. Let other people fuss about “Oh, I want a white Christmas.” Dean had been there, done that, had the scars from a _yuki-onna_ and the _barbegazi_ and the _giwakwa_ to prove it. Give him sun, and sand, plenty of college kids flush with Daddy’s money that he could hustle out of a few hundred bucks without breaking a sweat.

            He found himself a motel far enough from the haunted site that he wasn’t likely to get caught up in the crazy if things hit the fan and close enough that he wasn’t going to get caught in traffic trying to get in or out of there. Motels out here cost a bit more than he was used to but he’d deal with it, just find a few poker games or whatever. Sammy’s overgenerous little nest egg could come in handy, too. Maybe he’d hit Vegas on the way out and try to inflate that a little bit, see what he couldn’t do.

            Once he’d taken care of that, he went out to scout out the haunt site. He didn’t want to go in, not without a daytime look-see to get a feel for what he might be looking at, but he wanted to get a sense of the place at least.

            The neighborhood was enough to draw a low whistle from him. Sure everything had been built sometime in the late sixties, but still – these places were some fancy digs. The landscaping alone must have kept an army of gardeners employed and sucked up God knew how much water through those sprinkler systems. Maybe he’d stick around for a little while, sign on to one of those work crews and make a few bucks mowing lawns. It wouldn’t be the first time. Of course, they didn’t _need_ to stay in one place anymore, so there was no need for him to do that. He needed to unlearn that thinking.

            Instead, he looked around. While the homes in the neighborhood all had floodlights and security systems, and all showed signs of normal rich people living normal rich lives within their walls, the old Couch place was different. The place was dark, completely dark. That alone made the place look ominous. The landscaping had overgrown the fence and the gates, too, creating an impenetrable wall of greenery.

            He stared at the place for about half an hour. Dad would have said something about how the place felt. It didn’t “feel” right, or it “felt” like a poltergeist or something. Dean didn’t have that kind of instinct yet. He’d probably never have it. He’d been in this right alongside his dad since day one, no coddling and secrecy for Dean, but somehow he’d never gotten that unerring ken that John Winchester had, the one that made him the best in the world.

            All he had was what was in front of him: his car, the ordinance in the back, and a give-em-hell attitude.

            He might not be able to suss out what the monster was based on the direction of the wind and the kind of vine growing around the gate, but he could pick up on one thing. The Couch place was creepy as hell. He drove away once he’d decided that he’d had enough, aiming his car toward Stanford.

            This was stupid. Pastor Jim had already told him that Sammy was safe, so he didn’t need to go checking up on the kid. It made no sense for him to drive up to campus and sneak up to Sammy’s dorm with a bunch of stressed-looking frat boys. It made even less sense for Dean to steal a maintenance uniform and go sneaking up onto Sam’s floor. Here he was, though, creeping down Sam’s hall in pushing a cart like he had any business here.

            A nearby door creaked open. “Hey, buddy!”

            Dean turned. The kid was probably about Dean’s height, maybe an inch or so taller. He was blond and preppy, with bright, keen eyes and a wary expression on his face. He had his cell phone in his hand.

            Dean decided to go for confidence. “Hey, I’m just here to check on a problem with the lights, the kid in that room reported some problems before he checked out.”

            Blond Boy’s eyes narrowed and he started to dial his phone. “The ‘kid’ in that room didn’t report any problems. And he didn’t check out. Sam!” the kid yelled. “Call the cops!”

            “Shit!” Dean abandoned the cart and ran, cursing the blond kid who’d ruined his recon mission.

 


	2. Oh Come, All Ye Faithful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam makes an impression. John shows off his research skills. Dean gets caught.

Sam

 

            Sam saw Brady off with perfect decorum, never giving his parents or the few people remaining on their floor the slightest indication that they’d spent the night wrecking Sam’s single the night before. After Brady left, full of regretful glances and a hundred little things he’d “just happened” to forget, Sam cleaned up his room and settled in for the long winter break.

            The thing about isolation was that it was kind of the Winchesters’ bread and butter. Dean had always been kind of proud of the way that he’d given up everything to stay home and take care of Sammy, and maybe to some extent that was true. At the same time, Dean had a a pretty selective memory. He thought he’d spent every minute with Sam, but there had been plenty of long, drawn-out weeks when Sam had been abandoned in some festering mold-crusted motel room while Dean and their dad went off chasing God knew what three states away, with maybe twenty bucks to see him through because “we’ll be gone the weekend at the latest, Sam. Don’t leave the motel room.” Dean cleverly forgot all the times he’d ditched Sam in the motel or at Plucky’s, too, forbidden from being out of the “home” without Dean stuck to his side like burdock.

            None of which was to suggest that Dean hadn’t been around. He had, a hell of a lot more than their father had. The point was that Sam was no stranger to isolation. While Meli and Brady were both concerned about Sam being all alone in the big empty dorm, Sam himself didn’t have a problem with it. He had his internship. He had a couple of longer-term translation projects that could keep him occupied. And he had some books, books that he could read for no other reason than the fact that he wanted to read them.

            The fact that Brady had stopped some guy from trying to break into Sam’s room just before the semester ended did put a bit of a damper on things. The guy hadn’t been Dad; Brady had seen John before and the prints that Palo Alto PD had come back with hadn’t been a match to John either. It could have been some other hunter; Dad had a huge network that that Sam couldn’t even begin to penetrate.   He called Pastor Jim, who didn’t have any clues but promised to look into it. Other than that, Sam couldn’t do much about the guy either way. He couldn’t talk to any of his Taurus contacts without risking his secret.

            So he resolved not to worry about it. If hunters were going to come after him, they were going to come after him. His less innocent parephenalia – the books and the guns and the hex bags - were as hidden as they could be and he couldn’t do any more. He was going to make the best of his internship and if it was the last few weeks he had, so be it.

            A small part of him thought it might have been Dean. He knew that was stupid. Dean would never have come to see him.

            He didn’t have long to dwell on the subject, for better or worse. Brady and Meli both left on a Saturday. His first day with the local branch of the state prosecutor’s office was on Monday. He showed up ten minutes early, in his cheap and ill-fitting suit, spent an hour filling out paperwork, and was shown to a battered and rickety old metal desk that might well have been haunted.

            It was Sam’s first fully legal, taxes-taken-out and everything job.

            Sam was working for a lawyer by the name of Bill Ibemaka. Bill was about forty, and old enough to have some memory of the original case. “My parents tried to shelter me from it, of course, but there was only so much they could do,” he grinned. “I mean for a kid with a little determination, you know. I was never the kind of kid to just kind of sit back and take what I was spoon fed.”

            Sam grinned. He could remember back to a seedy motel room in Broken Bow, Nebraska, and for the first time the memory didn’t feel dirty or shameful. “I think I know how that feels, sir.”

            “I can’t imagine someone getting this internship if they did, Sam.” Bright white teeth flashed briefly against dark skin. “It was that case that drew me into the law, made me want to be a prosecutor. Of course,” he added, lifting his coffee in a kind of salute to either Sam or the case, it wasn’t clear, “I never figured that I’d wind up actually involved with this particular case.”

            Sam laughed. “It does seem a little unusual that the case is still active.”

            “I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a case quite like this. I mean sure, there’ve been cases that have inspired copycats. I just don’t think that I’ve seen anything quite this intense. I keep trying to convince the city to eminent domain the site in the hopes that it will cut down on that kind of thing, but so far I haven’t had any luck. The heirs still think that they can get something for the old dump, I suppose.”

            “It’s amazing what some people get attached to.” The victims in the Lange murder had ben wealthy, if Sam had done his research correctly, and the land that the site had been built upon was still worth about five times Sam’s four-year tuition, never mind the building.

            Sam’s phone rang, making both him and Bill jump. Sam hadn’t given the number to anyone. He didn’t even know the number and didn’t have anyone to give it to if he knew it. He picked up the handset. “State prosecutor’s office,” he said, figuring that it was the best way to handle the intrusion. He had a lifetime of faking it to fall back on, after all.

            “Sam?” He recognized the receptionist’s voice. “It’s Arundathi. I know that Bill’s around there somewhere. Can I speak with him please? It’s important.”

            Sam blinked. “Just a second.” He found the “mute” button on the elaborate keyboard – since when did a telephone need to look like the Enterprise’s navigation panel? “Bill? It’s Arundathi, at the front desk.”

            Bill frowned, but took the call. “Hey. What’s going on?” He paused for a moment. “I see. That’s… well it’s disturbing, frankly. Way to get the intern’s feet wet, though.” Sam’s ears perked up at that. “Yes, I’m going to bring him. That’s what he’s here for, right? Thanks for the call, Arundathi. I’ll see you when we get back.” He hung up and turned to Sam. “So. I hope you have a strong stomach.”

            Sam forced himself to look wide-eyed and innocent. If Bill had seen half of what he’d seen on any given case… but that was the wrong way to think. Who knew what Bill’s experiences had been? Just because Sam had seen some stuff didn’t mean that other people hadn’t had equally harrowing, but different, experiences. “Why, sir? Is something wrong?”

            “Depends on your point of view. There’s been another body found at the Couch house. We need to go check it out. Grab your jacket and let’s go.” He grinned. “Hell of a first day on the job, huh, kid?”

            Sam couldn’t help but return the grin. “You’re not kidding.”

            Bill drove like a Bostonian. The only thing he didn’t do was get up on the sidewalk, and a couple of times Sam thought he was going to do exactly that before he seemed to think better of it. Fortunately they made it to the abandoned Couch residence, which stood out like a dead tooth in the middle of the splendor of their fancy subdivision, in one piece.

            Sam’s skin broke out in goosebumps as they pulled up in front of the house. The old place had stood the test of time well, at least from the outside. The place was clearly abandoned but the outward signs were all cosmetic. What had once been carefully trimmed and tended bushes, maybe even topiaries, had grown wild and free to create a thick wall in front of the place. The paint peeled and blistered here and there. If those minor problems could be fixed, someone could move in tomorrow.

            That alone made the place even creepier by default. The Winchesters had stayed in a hundred squats, abandoned places just like this. None of them had been left whole. All of them had gaping holes in the walls, or busted out windows, or had the doors kicked out – some major damage. This place didn’t, and that just sat wrong with Sam. It had been sitting here for twenty-nine years, abandoned, and nothing had happened to it?

            Bill showed his ID to the cop at the gate, who waved him and Sam through without any further ado. The crime scene van and the medical examiner’s van took up a lot of the space in the circular driveway, not that Sam was about to complain. They were welcome to it.

            Bill cautioned him about contaminating the crime scene and led him into the house. Sam kept his hands to himself and followed him in, letting his eyes roam the building. Thank God for huge, well-lit windows; the power hadn’t been on in here for close to three decades. Sam followed his boss into the old formal living room, now a mockery of its former glory.

            The room stank. After the Lang murders, the place had just been abandoned. The fish tanks had just been left there – the fish had been abandoned, left to starve or suffocate in their own waste or whatever it was that fish did when you turned off the power to their filters and heaters and everything else that let them live in captivity and stopped feeding them. People had squatted in here too, and they hadn’t been terribly careful about their habits.

The body lying on the floor, however, hadn’t been a squatter.   If he had, he’d been pretty new at the role. “He doesn’t belong here,” Sam said to his boss, in a quiet voice. “He’s too clean.” The corpse, a teenaged male left naked and mutilated, with his death throes frozen on his face, stared back at him.

One of the detectives looked up sharply, but relaxed when he saw Bill. “Bill. Good to see you. This must be the intern.” He turned to face Sam. “Detective Teague, Palo Alto PD.” He held out a hand.

Sam shook it. “Sam Winchester. Pleased to meet you, sir.”

“You say our John Doe is too clean for here?” Teague cleared his throat and tilted his head to the side. “Care to explain?”

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “My, uh, my family didn’t always have a home. Sometimes we squatted. This guy was well groomed. He’s got no dirt under his fingernails, he’s clean-shaven, and his hair is pretty freshly cut. Except for the blood, there’s not a bit of dirt on him. He’s not a squatter, sir.” Sam fought to keep from squirming. He was never going to squat again, not if he could help it.

“That does narrow down our victim pool,” said another man, walking in from a room Sam knew from the blueprints to be a home office for the original victim paterfamilias, Jack Couch. “Hector Martinez, Palo Alto Police. What else can you tell me?”

Sam pursed his lips. “Well, I can tell you that your John Doe was killed in the exact same spot where Jack Couch was killed during the original homicides.”

Bill patted him on the back. “You studied up before you came on board. Good for you! That’s right, Sam. Our copycat killer murdered John Doe here in exactly the same place, with exactly the same mutilations, as Nicholas Lange murdered Jack Couch.”

Sam glanced over at the mutilated teenager. “I – this has happened before. I mean it’s happened between then and now, hasn’t it?”

Teague nodded. “It has. Between the Couch murders and today, there have been ten other homicides that we’d classify as ‘copycat’ murders in this house. That’s not counting other deaths, assaults, and accidents on the grounds.”

Bill shrugged. “That’s why the State was willing to spring for an intern, Sam.”

“We’ve caught some of the copycats,” Martinez added, as a photographer came in to take pictures of the body. “Maybe we’ve caught all of them, there’s no way to be sure. But why _this_ murder, of all murders, to fixate on? For so many people?”

“We can’t get the city to tear it down, so we have to figure out some other way to make it stop,” Bill said.

After that, Bill brought Sam back to the office and sat him down with a mountain of boxes. “This is all that we have about the Couch murders and the copycats,” he said. “Your job is to try to figure out what it is that keeps bringing people back to this particular site, to this particular mass killing out of all the choices they could make.”

Sam worked well into the night, trying to make some sense of the different deaths taking place at the Couch house. He noticed when people said goodbye, and he was pretty sure that he responded in kind, but neither the words nor the departures truly registered. The work was too engrossing. The Couch property was too much of a treasure trove of stuff, killing and vice and what the heck ever, to leave alone.

Only the sound of his phone jolted him out of his work. “State Prosecutor’s Office,” he greeted, even as he wondered how anyone had gotten through to his direct line. Wasn’t there a whole automated system or something? And it wasn’t like anyone had his direct line anyway.

“Sam, it’s Bill. I just got a call from Palo Alto PD. They picked up a guy nosing around our crime scene.”

Of course Bill had Sam’s direct line. That made sense, at least. “Okay, sir.”

“His name’s Winchester. Dean Winchester. Is he any relation of yours?”

Sam’s mouth went dry and his hands went numb. “Uh. Yes, sir. Brother. I. Um. I haven’t seen him since August, sir. When I left – got kicked out. Was anyone else with him?”

“Your restraining order against your father is still on file, Sam.” Bill’s tone was gentle, kind. “Do you want us to arrest Dean?”

“What? No! No, sir. I’ll, uh, I’ll be down there as soon as I can get there. He’ll be at headquarters, right? That’s just around the corner.” Sam’s heart felt like it was about to burst through his chest, and when he looked down he could see that his hands were shaking.

“Alright. I’ll tell Martinez and Teague to expect you. Don’t forget your ID – it opens a lot of doors, even for interns. I’ll need you to explain what’s going on in the morning, though. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.” Sam’s knees went weak with relief as the pair made their goodbyes.

He couldn’t quite tell what he was feeling. Joy, at finally getting to see Dean again? Misery, because the probability that Dean hated him was just too high to not be considered reality at this point? Terror, in case Dean was here to finish what John couldn’t do when he’d shown up in October? A weird kind of happiness because he’d fight John every step of the way, but if it was Dean he’d kneel down and bare his throat for the blade if that was what it took to make his brother proud?

Whatever he might be feeling he had to put it aside. Feelings didn’t get things done. Putting one foot in front of the other did. He grabbed his ID, his laptop and his bag and raced out the door.

Just as Bill had said, the ID got him right in. “Are you sure the two of you are brothers?” Teague asked him. “I mean, no offense, but the two of your are a little bit like night and day, you know?”

Sam grinned. “Yeah, it’s always been that way.” Dean had always been the golden child – but right about now, the cop wouldn’t see it that way. “He’s a good guy, you know?”

“Not if he’s trying to break into an active crime scene late at night.” Teague glared down the hall. “What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

“He –“ Sam stopped himself and tried another tactic. “My dad’s always been kind of obsessed with finding the person who killed my mom. He kind of pulled Dean into that mindset, a little bit. He’s a good guy, and his heart’s in the right place. Just – when police didn’t find Mom’s killer, you know, I think Dad lost his faith in the system. He thinks they can do a better job, even though they’ve been at it for nineteen years and still haven’t caught the guy either.”

Teague grinned at that. “Well, fortunately we caught up to him before he could mess up our crime scene. You want to take him home, you can go right ahead. Just make sure to warn him to let the pros do their jobs, okay?”

Sam could have kissed Teague out of sheer relief. The fact that the detective was kind of cute wouldn’t have hurt either. He didn’t kiss him, though, just walked into the interrogation room when Teague held the door for him.

He caught his brother’s eye. For a moment, all he wanted to do was throw himself into Dean’s arms and maybe hug him, cry into his shoulder a bit like he hadn’t done since he’d been five. He couldn’t do that right now, though. He had to make sure Dean played along. He smiled a little and flicked his eyes over to the mirror, letting Dean know that they were being watched.

Dean’s face had drained of all color when he walked in, but he gave a little nod, just barely noticeable. “Heya, Sammy.”

“Hey, Dean.” Sam didn’t have to fake his bigger grin. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

 

John

 

John glanced around the bar. It wasn’t much of a bar, but then again, John wouldn’t have expected much of a bar in a town like Stark City, a town with all of 150 people in it. Then again, he didn’t need much of a bar, as long as they served whiskey (which Newtonia did). He wasn’t here to hustle. He wasn’t here to meet a new love of his life, or even a love of the night. He was here for business. As long as the chairs held and the whiskey flowed, he’d be fine.

Part of him could see the appeal of a place like this. A town this small – well, even in the bar, John could feel the eyes of the locals upon him. They’d remember him, even if they never talked about it. If anything ever happened in town, you could bet the tall, dark-eyed stranger who’d sat in at Newtonia would be the first person that sprang to everyone’s mind. In a place like this, everyone knew everyone else, and anyone who didn’t belong stood out. Not to say that people were unfriendly, not at all, but they kept themselves safe by knowing what was out of place and making sure they took care of any threat.

If John had hidden out someplace like this, after Mary had died, would things have turned out differently? If he’d taken the boys to a truly small town like Stark City and raised them in one place, would things have turned out any better? Would Dean be more independent, less bleak in his outlook? Hell, maybe John would be a grandfather by now – a real grandfather, the kind who could enjoy his grandbabies and play with them, not simply a genetic donor who didn’t know because who the hell knew with Dean.

And Sammy? Would he have turned out right, a kid who knew right from wrong and stood by his family over everything else instead of a wastrel and a shirker who ran off chasing rainbows?

John shook his head. With all this musing, at least he knew where Sam had gotten his tendency toward fantasy. If a regular human serial killer had been after the family, or had been what had killed pure and perfect Mary, maybe a place like Stark City would have been just fine. Supernatural monsters didn’t care about things like that. Sometimes they didn’t even care about witnesses. The only way to stay safe was to keep moving. The only way to keep other people safe from the curse that dogged them, dogged _Sam_ , was to keep moving. Dean had turned out the way he had because circumstances had demanded it, and there were much worse ways that he could have turned out. He was a goddamn good hunter, his father’s gun hand, and John was proud of him.

Sam – well, everyone and every _thing_ kept saying that he was “special.” He’d probably always have turned out bad.

The door to Newtonia opened up, and John’s head swiveled just like everyone else’s to get a look at who was letting all of the cold air in. The new arrival was a woman, the only one in the place who didn’t wear an apron. She was tall and blonde, and while the December air demanded bulky winter clothing John could still see that she had an aura of strength about her. She strode across the wooden floor, good solid work boots clumping loudly, and took the other seat at his table. “You must be John Winchester.”

He held himself still for a few seconds. He wasn’t used to people just walking up to him and seating themselves like this, like it was nothing. Like they had some kind of right. He didn’t think he was being arrogant about his reputation; he’d earned a bit of respect. It wasn’t like you got a lot of folks who stayed in the job for twenty years. At the same time, he hadn’t met a lot of lady hunters either. “You must be ‘T.’”

She nodded and held out a hand. “The ‘t’ stands for Tara.”

He hesitated a little longer before shaking. “Alright, Tara. Travis says you’re reliable.”

She gave a little snort. “That’s mighty sweet of him. You’ve got a reputation of your own, Winchester.”

John gritted his teeth. “I suppose I do. Have you ever gone after this kind of game before?”

“Sure. Not exactly like this, but I’ve gone after some pretty big fish.” She looked around the bar, where people had gone back to their own devices. “Don’t worry about them,” she told him, with a toss of her hair. “Once they saw you were with me they weren’t too concerned with you.”

Oh, well, because her word made it all okay. “So how do you and Travis know each other?”

“We’ve hunted together before. We went after a really old cursed ring down in New Orleans once. It was brought over from Europe – a witch cursed it just as she was being burned alive, back in Spain.” She grinned. “We found it, but it took a little doing. If you wondered where he got that scar on his left calf, that’s where.”

“So you got him all scarred up and now you want me to take you on as a partner.” John tossed back the rest of the whiskey in his glass.

Tara wasn’t offended by his words. Instead, he just laughed. “If I hadn’t been there it would have gone through a couple of feet higher, if you know what I mean. But hey.”   She winked. “So this thing.”

“Knife.”

“Right. This knife. Travis says that it should be able to take out anything, right? Anything at all.”

John swallowed. “Yeah. About that. I’m not looking for it to put it on a shelf, Tara. I need it. I got into this whole thing because something killed my wife. I don’t know what yet, but if that knife can help me kill it then I need it.”

She smirked. “And you don’t want to share, is that it, Winchester?” The waitress brought over a tumbler for Tara and refilled John’s glass. “That’s okay. I get it. It ain’t like many people get into this business because it’s the righteous thing to do, right? We get into it for revenge. You get yours, Johnny. I can wait to get mine.”

John couldn’t help but chuckle at the way she said it. “So. Travis’ source seemed to think that we should start around here. According to this guy, who sounds about as reliable as a cat but he’s what we’ve got, the thing was positively identified by both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Second Battle of Newtonia, which happened right around here somewhere.”

Tara rolled here eyes. “Hence the catchy bar name. Yeah, it was a Union victory even though they lost half again as many people as the boys in gray. Hard to tell what counts as a victory, though. I mean, Price’s Missouri Expedition was able to retreat safely into Indian Territory, which was Shelby’s goal, so…” She trailed off and blushed. “You don’t care.”

“I’ve never been a big history buff.” He ran his hands through his hair. That had been Sam, of course. Sam had been the one who got into all that, the one who dug into the who and the why. Thought it mattered why a ghost did things. “Never did seem to change much, you know? Blue or gray, if I meet ‘em now I’ve got to get rid of them.”

Her lips twitched and she looked to the side. “I suppose you’re right. I grew up not far from the battlefield. It wasn’t one of the bloodier battles of the war, but the area has its lingerers, you know? I guess I always figured that if I could understand what went on in a place, I’d have a better clue of what to expect. I’d know better what kinds of critters were drawn to an area.” She shrugged.   “You know, how some places with a real violent past tend to attract the bigger nasties than someplace that’s just normal.”

“I guess there might be something to that.” He shifted. Sam had said a lot of the same things, but Sam was young. Untested. Tainted. Tara came with a recommendation from a respected hunter. “I guess Lawrence had a past of its own, come to think of it.” He swirled the whiskey in his glass.

“Didn’t Quantrill’s Raiders burn that whole town to the ground?” Tara sipped from her glass.

“Most of it.” He met her eyes. “Killed between a hundred fifty and two hundred men, too.”

She tilted her glass toward him. “Yeah, that’s bound to leave a big ol’ scar. That where you’re from?”

“That’s where we were living when my wife was killed.” He looked down, unwilling to face the attack even after all these years, but then he looked up again. Why should he hide from it? Why should he hide from anything, other than the fact that he’d let her killer go unpunished for close to two decades?   “My sons were born there.”

“Ouch.” She took a deep breath and leaned back a little. “Okay. Well, here’s probably a good place to start. You’ve got a bunch of guys who probably don’t see eye to eye on much else, both claiming that they’re seeing this damn thing, someone probably did see it. We can take a look at what the battle field museum has to offer tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan.” They clinked glasses and passed the rest of the night with tales of past hunts.

John met Tara at the battlefield museum the next morning. Apparently the curator was a “friend.” They didn’t elaborate beyond that and John didn’t think Tara would trade sexual favors for access – not that Dean didn’t do exactly the same thing. Tara seemed genuinely friendly toward this guy, Dwayne Weeks or something like that, and she was a local. At the same time, John could see the way Dwayne looked at Tara and he knew that the guy would have given his right arm for just a kiss.

He could see that way that Weeks looked at him, too. Fortunately, that shiny Ph.D. after his name meant that he was smart enough not to take a swing at John.

Weeks brought them sketches and diaries left behind by soldiers that referenced this particular battle and the surrounding area, and the pair got to work. John would have strongly preferred to hand all of this off to Sammy, lock him up with all of this dusty crap and go out and do something a little more active and manly, but he wasn’t here and this was what they had. The paper was delicate, the ink was fading, and John’s eyes hadn’t stood the test of time quite as well as the rest of his body had. Not for this kind of up-close detailed work, anyway.

They sat in that sealed room for five hours before either of them found anything. “Bingo!” Tara called from across the table. “Got something here!”

John made a face at his own Civil War journal, which contained extensive notes about body lice. “Alright. What’ve you got?”

She flashed him a wicked grin, cleared her throat, and leaned into her work as she began to read.

“ _November 1, 1864_

_It is only now that I can write of what I saw these three days hence, although the mind shudders away from it even now. Albert, Wilson and I had just taken the hill when we saw that some of the enemy had holed up within a small farmhouse only about a hundred yards away. Wishing to capture them, and to spare any civilians whatever indignities the rebels were capable of inflicting,_

_“We made our way to the farmhouse, but though we spurred our horses on to great feats of speed we were too late. The men who had preceded us were all deceased, torn apart as though by two pitchforks. One alone remained as I gained entry into the building, and he not for long._

_“I could not move; I could only gape in horror as he faced a civilian in his shirt sleeves. The man had an evil countenance, and with his beard and his hair in such an unkempt state he really appeared to be quite wild. Both hair and beard were white, but eld seemed no impediment as he battled this young rebel warrior._

_“I swear, I was not upon the drink when I saw that rebel’s eyes turn black._

_“This man, whoever he was, seemed utterly unfazed by the change in his attacker but instead just grinned. The man threw his head back and some black smoke appeared to issue forth from his mouth, but the enemy stabbed him in the chest all the same. Then he slashed through the smoke, too. All manner of lights flashed, like unto the worst of storms._

_“Then all fell silent. The killer turned his awful face onto us, and I could see his weapon. It appeared to be no more than the jawbone of some kind of animal; I could see the teeth of the thing, such as they were, still stuck there in the bone, ossified and horrible. I could not move. I could not breathe. The man, if indeed a man he was at all, sniffed at the air as though scenting prey._

_“Then he disappeared._

_“We searched the building, but there were no survivors. We did find the corpse of a woman and a child, in an attic._

_“We should have given them a proper Christian burial and we did not. Albert, he said that what had happened was not natural – as if we needed him to tell us that! – and that in his country certain precautions had to be taken lest the dead rise up to hurt the living. The whole scene was too awful to contemplate, but Albert counseled us. He had salt in his knapsack and he directed us to scatter it onto the remains. Then we burned the house down around them.”_

Tara closed the book. “Wow. That was… intense.”

John blinked. He hadn’t realized that he’d been holding his breath until now. “What kind of creature would that be? Some kind of ghost? An exceptionally powerful spirit? I’ve never seen anything that makes someone’s eyes turn black.”

The blonde shook her head. “I have no idea. There’ve been rumors about a man who pops up around Missouri from time to time, though. Wild hair, wild beard. Never farms, but apparently he likes bees for some reason. I wonder if that was him?”

John squirmed. “I don’t know. But that other one – the black smoke monster? What even is that?”

“I got nothin’, John.” Tara grinned at him. “But I know a way to figure out some more. This same guy says that he thought he saw the ‘Jawbone Devil’ again, in a small cabin over near Neosho.” What do you say that you and me take a drive?” She indicated the page before her. “I’d be willing to bet you that our next clue would be there.”

John considered. The memory of an obviously traumatized man – a seminarian from Boston, according to the provenance notes – was a pretty flimsy excuse to go tearing off to a new site. At the same time, he’d chased after worse leads, and left his kids alone to do it too. What did he really have to lose this time? It wasn’t as though Neosho was all that far from where he was right now, anyway.

“Let’s do it.”

Who knew what they’d find? Of course between black-smoke-monsters and crazed wild men armed with miraculous jawbones and a rumored fondness for bees, what they found could only get stranger.

 

Dean

 

Dean had been prepared for a lot when the cops had hauled him into the interrogation room, especially when his real name had come into play. He’d been ready for the usual blather about grave desecrations and gambling, maybe a warning to get out of town. Maybe a threat of a few weeks in the county lockup, because he had been trying to get into an active crime scene, but come on. Those guys didn’t really know what they were doing. They needed a real professional to solve this case for them.

But as soon as the word “Winchester” had been spoken they’d stopped and looked at each other and just walked out of the room, and that couldn’t be good. Dean had been left to stew in his own juices. He’d been on the verge of picking the lock on the door and just walking out of the miserable, windowless, sweaty little room when the door had finally opened again and there was Sammy.

Sammy.

He stood there, a weird little smile playing on his lips and this look in his eyes like he was going to cry, or like he expected Dean to cry, or like maybe he had a sucking chest wound, it was hard to tell with the kid sometimes, not like he freaking confided in anyone ever. And those shining hazel eyes, they met Dean for a second and then they flicked to the mirror. Oh, right. They were being watched. Dean gave a little nod, just enough that Sam would see it. “Heya, Sammy,” he said, giving his best cocky grin.

Sam’s shoulders seemed to lose some of their tension and his grin – well, he showed a dimple, just one, but it was enough. “Hey, Dean,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

Sam shook the hands of the detectives who’d hauled Dean into the room that smelled like stale armpits and thanked them for their time and effort. _Seriously, Sam? How much ass-kissing can you do before your lips freeze that way?_ Dean thought to himself, but he managed to keep from laughing out loud. Sam had to do what he had to do, and no one seemed to be holding back a laugh at him in that ridiculous cheap suit that hung on him like a friggin’ scarecrow.

Only when they were a couple of blocks away from the police station, and well out of sight of any cops, lawyers, bail bondsmen or anyone else for that matter, did Sam turn around and throw his gorilla arms around Dean. Dean all but staggered under the onslaught. “You have no idea how good it is to see you,” he breathed into Dean’s ear.

He should push Sammy away. He should point out that Sam could have been seeing his awesome older brother every damn day if he’d stayed with his family the way he was friggin’ supposed to. Right now, though, he couldn’t. He opened his mouth to say it, but the words that came out were, “It’s good to see you too, Sammy.”

“I was so worried about you,” Sam continued, face buried in Dean’s shoulder. “When you were being poisoned by that pukwudgie. I was so scared, Dean.”

“That pukwudgie who still has pictures of you, Sammy?” Dean patted him on the back. “That one? It’s okay. I’m okay. All better. Thanks for the soup there, Taurus.”

Sam pulled back a little. “Yeah, that kind of blew up a little bit, didn’t it?” He started walking. “Hey, where did you leave the Impala, anyway?” All of the color drained from his face. “Oh shit. You’re not alone, are you?”

Dean put a hand on his arm. “Sammy, Dad took off, he’s off chasing some kind of lead on something. Didn’t leave a note or anything. You know how he is. I’ve got the Impala. It’s okay.”

Sam sagged a little, grinning again. “So. Where did you stash it?”

“Come on, I’ll show you. Bet you’ll be glad to see the inside of her again.” Dean grinned, and Sam hung his head and gave that sheepish little smile that he got, the one that could have lit the whole city.

Dean led the way. “So how come they called you? How come they even knew to call you?” His body went cold as realization dawned on him. “It’s that thing with Dad, isn’t it?”

“No.” Sam’s hands balled into fists at his side, just for a second. “Believe it or not, the crime scene you wandered onto tonight is part of an ongoing project at the state prosecutor’s office. I snagged an internship during the winter break and they’re letting me work on the case.”

“Well good for you, Sammy.” The words tasted like bile in his mouth. “Internship on a hunting job, huh?”

Sam’s eyeroll was epic. “Dean, this isn’t a job, okay? This is a very real, and a very active, crime scene. There was a kid murdered in there. A young one, teenager.”

“Because recent deaths have never led us to a job before.” Dean shook his head. “It’s got all the hallmarks of our kind of thing. I mean, people’s faces have melted completely off!”

“Which was commensurate with a meth lab accident gone horribly, horribly awry.” Sam’s bitch face might have peeled paint. “It’s not like there aren’t legit jobs in Palo Alto, Dean. This one hasn’t pinged anyone’s radar, and it’s been active for close to thirty years.”

“Just means no one’s been paying attention, Sammy.”

Sam stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Pastor Jim sent you, didn’t he?”

“Well, I mean he gave me the case, but – son of a bitch.” Dean shook his head, rubbing at his jaw. “I let him run me right into that one, too.”

“It’s okay.” Sam started walking again. “I mean, you thought he knew better, right? It’s cool.”

Dean realized half a second too late that he’d just essentially rejected his brother all over again. “Hey, wait! It’s not that I’m not happy to see you, it’s just…”

“I know, Dean.” For a second, Sam’s voice sounded about a thousand years old. Dean thought his heart might break.

“But you know, since we are here together and everything,” he tried, reaching out and putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder, “maybe we could grab dinner or something. There has to be someplace you wacky college kids like to go late at night. I’m sure you’ve already eaten –“ He saw Sam jump. “You haven’t eaten.”

Sam flushed. “I got really into the work!”

“Dumbass kid. Jim said you had people here taking care of you.”   Dean shook his head.

“They all went home for Christmas – the break.” Sam shrugged. “Besides, the case is totally worth skipping a meal or two.”

Dean could see the Impala up at the end of the street. “Sam, you think just about anything is worth skipping a meal or two, let’s be real. Let’s find someplace where you and I can sit down and have a bite to eat, maybe grab a beer, and we’ll catch up and shoot the shit.”

Sam rewarded him with a full-on, two-dimple smile, and Dean knew all was right with the world.

As it turned out, Sam didn’t get off campus all that often but when he did, there was one diner that he liked that made him think of Dean. He said it with a deep blush, one that kind of made Dean want to blush too. At the same time he wanted to shake Sammy and yell, “You wouldn’t have to miss us if you hadn’t left!”

That would have been counterproductive though. Instead, he parked the car and followed Sam into the diner.

It made Dean itch. It looked like every roadside diner they’d ever stopped in, but sanitized. The pleather seats gleamed. The Formica tables gleamed. The linoleum was still bright ice-white and the black looked like onyx; nothing had happened to scuff it up yet. The walls were bright bubble-gum pink and no grease stains marred their Pepto perfection. “What the hell, Sam? This place makes you think of me?”

Sam laughed out loud. “Brady says the burgers here are amazing. Besides, if I want to get to a real diner I’d have to steal a car and I’m trying to keep that kind of thing to a minimum these days.”

“Well I can see where you would, what with you being all buddy-buddy with the cops now and everything.” Dean winked just as the waitress – a blonde with legs for miles and miles – approached. “I’m liking this place better already.”

The blonde, whose nametag proclaimed her to be Myrna, rolled her eyes and glanced at Dean. “What can I get for ya?”

“I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger, medium rare.” He passed his menu back.   “Miller to drink, if you’ve got it.”

“Sure thing.” She turned her eyes over to Sam. “And for you – Sam!” Her eyes widened with delight and she threw her arms around the kid, making Sam blush and Dean sputter. “I haven’t seen you since –“ She covered her mouth.

“It’s okay, Tracy.” Sam’s smile was gentle. “You can say it. Tracy, this is my brother, Dean. Dean, this is Tracy. She’s a junior, she’s on my Mock Trial team.”

“Your Mock Trial team?” Dean asked, trying to keep his tone serious.

“Yeah, Sam’s a budding rock star. We were really bummed when he got hurt in that mountain lion attack, but he got Harris and Brady to smuggle his laptop into the hospital and got a lot of the research done anyway. Honestly, there’s ‘play through the pain’ and there’s this guy.”   She patted Sam on the back. “Should you even be out and about right now? They told me you were supposed to be in bed still!”

Sam looked down. “I’m fine. Really, I am. Picked up that internship down at the prosecutor’s office and everything.”

“Lucky!” She shook her head, shaking her ponytail. “Although – I mean, you’re working on a serial killer copycat, right?”

Sam nodded. “It’s okay, though. It’s fascinating stuff.”

Tracy shuddered. “I’m hoping to go into litigation. Or corporate. No blood. Almost no blood,” she added as an afterthought. “Let me guess what you want. Salad, hold the dressing, plain grilled chicken.”

Dean made a face. “Yuk. No wonder you’ve gotten so skinny, Sammy, all you’re eating is rabbit food. Come on, you’ve got to eat something with a little more substance than that! “ He grabbed a menu. “No way I’m going to get you to eat a burger, am I right?”

Sam shuddered. “You’ve got to give me time to detox, Dean. Get all of those grease bombs out of my system before you push another one on me.”

“Give him that Southwest Chicken Sandwich, the one with the avocados on it and stuff. They’re good for you. I read it in a magazine once. What does that come with?”

“The garlicky greens, please,” Sam asked quickly, intervening before Dean could order something normal like fries or onion rings. “Just a water for me.”

“You don’t want your friend to get you a beer, Sammy?” Dean stretched back as Tracy-or-Myrna stood up straighter.

“She has a job, Dean. And I wouldn’t want her to get kicked out of school.” Sam pursed his lips up all prissy and glared at Dean.

Whatever her name was, the waitress laughed. “I’ll have those orders right up, guys.” She paused, hand lingering on Sam’s shoulder. “It really is good to see you doing better, Sam.”

Dean watched her go. “So,” he said. “She seems to be pretty friendly.”

“Yeah, she’s nice.” Sam started playing with a packet of artificial sweetener.

“Is she nice or is she _nice?”_ Dean waggled his eyebrows up and down. “Because she is not hard on the eyes, let me tell you, and she’s definitely into what you’ve got cooking. I’m telling you, you take her over to the movies, or over to the museum, or whatever it is that you eggheads do, and she’d be eating out of your hand in no time.”

Sam’s look could have withered an entire redwood forest, which made it worthwhile in and of itself. “Yeah, she’s an actual woman, Dean. Not a kitten. I’m starting to wonder about you. Do I need to buy you a flea collar?”

Dean’s jaw dropped. “You’re a flea collar!”

Sam laughed, and Dean laughed, and it was all okay.

Tracy came back, bringing them both beers as well as their dinners, and the brothers relaxed into their meals. Dean told Sam about the El Sombraron he and Dad had taken out back in November, and about some of his less-supernatural adventures in Fall River. Sam, in turn, told Dean about some of things he’d gotten up to while he was on campus. Apparently he was on the mock trial team, and on a soccer team (because of course he was on a soccer team.) He’d started working out at the gym because he could, and he’d started up a side business doing Latin translations on the side.

After they’d finished dinner they paid the check and took off. Tracy made sure that Sam knew that she was still in town right up to Christmas, and she’d be back by the twenty-eighth. “She’s totally into you, dude,” Dean said, nudging Sam with his elbow.

“Not really.” Sam shrugged. “I’m just the only guy she knows on campus right now. She’s friendly.”

Dean shot his brother a sharp glance. “Do you not like her much or something?”

“What? No! She’s a great girl – young woman. She’s smart, and strong, and there’s not a lot that she can’t do. She can handle a debate like no one I’ve ever seen.” He shook his head. “Just trust me – if she wanted anything she’d have done something before now.” Sam hesitated, then turned to fully face Dean. “Look. I have a room. It’s not huge, but we’ve slept in the Impala and my room’s bigger than that. Why not crash with me? It’s for free. That way you don’t have to spend hard-earned money on a motel room.”

Dean snorted. “I won it in a poker game, doofus.”

“Not my point.” Sam waved a hand. “You can save it for sometime when you don’t have a brother with his own place that you can totally use. Dean, dude, the showers never run out of hot water. Ever.”

Dean bit the inside of his cheek. “Sammy, Dad wouldn’t like it, not even to save cash.”

“He doesn’t have to know. It’s not like I’m going to tell him, Dean.” Sam gazed into his eyes with those adoring, pleading kaleidoscopes he called eyes and Dean was lost.

“Okay, fine. But we’re totally talking about this case.” He held up a finger. “And about Tracy.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

The dorm in general was okay. It was mostly cinderblocks, but he guessed that freshman housing wasn’t exactly supposed to be a luxury suite. In a lot of ways, too, this place was better than most of the motels and squats the Winchesters used. The place was in good repair despite being the regular abode of eighteen year olds who, in Dean’s opinion, could barely open a door for themselves, and they had furniture and everything in the common areas. Sam’s room – a single, no roommate – was at the end of the hall.

Dean noted the salt line as they entered. “Glued in,” Sam pointed out. “Since there’s a lot of foot traffic, and I’m going to be here until May and all. Here, come on.” Sam led him next door, where they picked the lock on someone else’s room and stole a stripped bed.

“What the hell, Sammy?” Dean asked as they moved it into Sam’s tiny room. Quarters were definitely much more cramped with the extra bed in here, but Sam’s obsessive neatness meant that it was just cramped instead of stupidly uncomfortable. “We always used to share.”

“Those beds were bigger,” Sam said, pointing to the narrow dorm beds. “Believe me. The only way to fit two or more people into one of these beds is if they’re very, very friendly.” That _or more_ stuck out in Dean’s mind, but he kept his mouth shut. Some things he wasn’t ready to know about his baby brother yet.

   Sam pulled a set of sheets out from some mystical dimension that had been closed off by Dean’s purloined bed and covered it. “Besides, Brady’s’ roommate’s a dick anyway, I don’t mind stealing his bed. I’ll stuff some rocks into his mattress before I give it back or something so that it looks like it was all a prank.”

“Oh, of course.” Dean nodded and tried to pretend like he got it. “Okay, so about this haunted house.”

“Nothing haunted about it, Dean. There was a spree killer there, twenty-nine years ago. Nicholas Lange killed Jack Couch and his entire family on the grounds that they were ‘polluting our Father’s creation.’” Sam accepted the beer that Dean passed him and took a pull.

“You don’t think the dude could be haunting the place?” Dean glanced around the room. There wasn’t a lot about this room that screamed “Sam.” The books seemed to be the most personal but even those didn’t have a lot of character to them. It wasn’t like he’d carried a lot with him when he’d taken off – not like he’d had a lot to carry – and he didn’t seem like he’d added too much outside of schoolbooks. Most of which, Dean recognized from flyers he’d seen around various college campuses, Sam would probably have sold back.

“That would be a neat trick, seeing as how he’s having a chill up in San Quentin.” Sam smirked. “I mean astral projection is technically a thing, but these copycat murders are happening on the material plane, being committed by people who are leaving real fingerprints and real DNA evidence.” He shuddered. “The last one, before today, left seeds all over his victims.”

“What, like…” Dean drew back and made a face.

“No, no. Unusually enough, Lange and his copycats don’t have a sexual component to their crimes. No, they scattered actual seeds. As in, embryonic plants. In this case they were species native to the Bay area.” Sam nodded. “Don’t tell anyone, they never let that one make the papers just in case.”

“My lips are sealed.” Dean wiped his mouth to signify closure, although to be real who was he going to tell? Dad wasn’t going to care about this case unless it went south, which it hopefully wouldn’t. “Why seeds?”

“Lange had an agenda. He feels that humanity is destroying the Earth, God’s creation. In destroying humanity, he’s helping to restore the Earth to its true splendor.” Sam flipped a pencil up into the air as he spoke. “It’s… it’s a thing. I mean he was careful to minimize the environmental impact of his activities before he attacked the house, insofar as they were understood at the time. I guess you could call him an eco-terrorist, but he wasn’t trying to achieve any kind of policy change or anything like that. He just wants every last human on the earth to, you know, die.”

Dean blinked. “Sounds charming. Why is he still sitting around? Why haven’t they fried his ass?”

Sam shook his head. “Because for one thing his crimes were committed in 1973, and his trial took place in 1974. No death penalty in the United States, thanks to the US Supreme Court. For another, I don’t think that he would have gotten death even if he had been tried after capital punishment was resumed, Dean. I don’t think – I mean, look. I think the guy’s got some issues. An insanity defense is difficult to pursue, everyone tries for it and not many can really build a successful defense. After looking at the case, and knowing that a jury would have seen the alternatives as being give this guy the insanity defense or the chair? They’d have let him use that defense.”

Dean grimaced. “If you say so.” He put his beer down. “What I don’t get though is why, if this guy did it and he’s been making baskets in San Quentin for thirty years or whatever, why does shit keep happening at that house?”

Sam rested his beer bottle against his temple. “Because of copycats. You know how it is, Dean. It’s the same reason serial killers get groupies.”

“Besides you, you mean.”

Sam flipped him off. “People catch onto a thing, they want to ride that wave I guess. But think about it – no one’s ever seen even the slightest hint that any of the victims are there, the killer’s accounted for, and all of the incidents are just as explainable. Believe me, if this were a case I’d speak up, but if it were a case someone would have picked up on it before now. There are hunters in the area. I picked Stanford in part because there were no reports of anything supernatural here at all.”

“Seriously? You hated us that much?”

Sam sighed and drained the rest of his beer in one gulp. “I hated getting hurt. I hated seeing you get hurt. I hated getting told to suck it up, get out there and get hurt again.” He took a deep breath. “Good night, Dean.”

 


	3. Angels We Have Heard On High

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam meets a fan. John gets a clue. Dean gets cranky.

Sam

 

            Life settled into a routine that, for Sam, seemed both familiar and completely foreign. Dean joined him for his morning run. Then they both got cleaned up, and Dean dropped Sam off at work while he went off to do Dean things. Sam didn’t exactly know what those Dean things might be during the day, but he didn’t get caught breaking into the crime scene again and he didn’t have any fresh bruises so Sam figured he was safe. When Sam called, Dean picked Sam up and they got dinner. Then they went out. Sam could do more work on the case while Dean played pool, or while Dean played the field, whichever.

            Sam wasn’t quite sure what to make of the situation. On the one hand, Dean running with him meant someone pushing him further, trying to make him run faster and harder than he was really ready to go quite yet. All of his insides, and more than a few of his outsides, balked at the harsh treatment and the sudden spike in activity.   At the same time, Dean wasn’t giving him a hard time about pushing himself and trying to act like Sam was going to break into a thousand pieces if he sneezed. So, there was that.

            Dean going to bars with him – well, Sam didn’t go to bars as a general rule, but locking the two of them up in Sam’s dorm room just seemed like part of the lesson plan for Bad Things Happening 101 so Sam didn’t push it. Instead he just brought his laptop and did his work wherever Dean decided to drag them that night; it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to doing his work with distractions. It hadn’t been all that long, after all. The thing was, Dean hadn’t stuck around to go shoot pool by himself. He wanted to do things with his brother, not sit there and amuse himself while his brother stuck his face into the laptop.

            And Sam felt bad about that. He hadn’t thought he’d ever see Dean again, never mind play host to him for however long, when he’d signed up for the internship. At the same time, he was responsible for this job. He was going to do it, damn it.

            Plus, there was the issue of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sam wasn’t stupid. He knew that Dean was holding back on a lot. He’d let loose eventually, it was just a matter of time.

            Sam didn’t have to make it happen any faster, though. He kept his head down and did his job, tried his best to placate his brother and let the days pass by.

            After about three days, Bill came to Sam’s desk, eyebrows drawn together and a drawn look on his face. “Sam, I need to ask you a question and I need perfect honesty from you.”

            Sam’s mouth went dry. “Of course, sir.” Something had happened. Maybe Dean had gotten caught on the Couch site. Maybe Dad had been busted doing something equally illegal. Oh God, maybe it was Dad. Maybe Dad had framed Sam for something in an attempt to ruin Stanford for him – not because he wanted him to come home, but just because Sam had dared to defy him. He should never have let Dean talk him into breakfast this morning; he was going to be sick.

            “Have you ever, even as a young child, entered into correspondence with Nicholas Lange?” Bill’s narrow eyes bored into his. “Be honest with me. Even a postcard for a school project.”

            “Not that I can recall, sir. I mean, I went to a lot of schools, some of my teachers had some weird ideas.” He tried not to shudder at the memory of Ms. Lyle. “I think post cards to mass murderers would stand out a little, though.”

            His boss leaned back and steepled his hands in front of his face. “Here’s the thing, Sam. Lange is demanding to see you.”

            Sam drew back. “Me? Why?”

            Bill shook his head. “He hasn’t said. This morning he set his blanket on fire – no idea how he got matches into his cell – and asked to see you in person. Says he knows you’re working on the case and that he’ll give up the location of three additional victims if we bring you to San Quentin to meet with him.”

            Sam swallowed. “There’s never been any indication of any other victims. Sir.”

            “Until now.” Bill folded his lips together. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this even a little bit. But Sam, if we can bring closure to any other families – “

            Sam nodded. “I’ll go, of course.” He grinned. “I mean, how unsafe can the visiting room at San Quentin be, right?”

            Bill’s return grin was wan, to say the least, but he tried.

            The drive took an hour and a quarter. Sam was grateful that he’d had the foresight to leave his guns at home today; he had the documentation to back them up, some of it even genuine, but he didn’t feel up to facing a notorious spree killer just after having gone through a harrowing search no matter what. Once he and Bill had been checked in and searched, they were led to room in which Nicholas Lange waited for them.

            Lange was about six feet tall, give or take an inch. His blond hair had started fading to white some time ago, but very few wrinkles creased his face even though he had to be past sixty by now. He smirked at the pair and lifted his hands. Chains clanged against the metal table. “I’d get up, but well. You know.”

            Sam’s skin crawled. He’d faced down monsters before. He’d faced down creatures that would kill him without a second thought. He’d faced down creatures that firmly believed they’d be safer if he died, and they’d probably have been right. He’d faced down vengeful spirits, and he’d faced down witches. He’d fought a tulpa before he’d understood what sex was. Nicholas Lange outshone all of that evil combined.

            Bill sat down in one of the chairs across from the killer; Sam followed his boss’ lead. “Good morning, Lange.” Bill gave a thin, professional smile. “I hear you’ve got quite the exciting trip to Isolation coming up.”

            A lazy grin spread out over Lange’s pale face. “It’s okay. I don’t mind. I like it in there. It’s quiet. Sometimes a man likes the quiet. It’s easier to hear when there’s not so much noise around. Isn’t that right, Sam?” His icy blue eyes swiveled so that they met Sam’s.

            Sam felt like a frog in biology class, all pinned and helpless. He was proud of the way his voice didn’t break or shake. “I’ve never been in Solitary. I’ll have to take your word for it.”

            “You’ll find out eventually.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It really is very nice to finally meet you, you know. You’ve been the talk of the town for close to thirty years.”

            Bill’s jaw hung open, and his eyebrows drew together. “Winchester hasn’t even been around for twenty years, Lange. I’m going to have them do a search of your cell for contraband again.”

            “You know they won’t find anything. And it’s not like you don’t know the boy’s something special, Ibemaka. He’s one of a kind. And you know it. I’ve been waiting to see you for a very long time, Sam.”

            “Why?” Sam leaned back and forced his shoulders to relax.

            “That would spoil the surprise. But you know you’re something special. You know you’re more than that whiskey-soaked nightmare of a father and his puppet of a son.”

            Sam’s blood went cold. He didn’t know about “more.” He was _different_ from Dad and from Dean, which was why he was here and not off finding new ways to avoid bedbugs, but that was different. “You don’t know anything about them.”

            “Oh, but I do. This body might be stuck inside a concrete box but I’m not limited by some cage built by men. No, Sammy. You’d be amazed at what he shows me.”

            Bill had regained his game face. “Who is ‘he,’ Lange?”

            “Don’t you worry about it, Ibemaka. It would be too small for that puny little brain of yours to handle, and you couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Suffice it to say that I was a little early to the party, that’s all.”

            Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Early to the party. You murdered six people in their home.”

            “I did. Wrong kind of people for what I needed, though. Only a couple of them qualified for the sacrifice.” He gave a low, throaty chuckle and shifted position. His chains rattled again. “Man, you wouldn’t believe how pissed I was that someone else pulled it off.”

            “Pulled what off?” Bill leaned forward. “You said something about bodies.”

            “It’s true. I did make an agreement. My Master always honors his agreements.” He laid his hands out on the table, palms down, fingers splayed wide. Sam’s eyes were caught by a series of burns on the backs of the man’s hands, like splash marks in raised pink. What could have caused that? “Four months before I killed the Couch family I murdered four Westinghouse employees that I caught burying drums of waste from their Sunnyvale plant in the Stevens Creek Shoreline Nature Study Area. I’m not sure what was in those barrels,” he said, leaning forward with a little grin on his face. He addressed his words to Sam, as though he expected Sam to find the humor in his story. “But I don’t mind telling you that they sure didn’t like it when me and my buddies stuck them inside and hammered the lids on.”

            Sam’s stomach turned, but he kept his cool. He had to. He could just see Dean, if Dean heard about it. _Oh, widdle Sammy heard a scary story and barfed all over his monkey suit!_ “So you did this because of the environmental pollution they were causing.”

            “Well yeah.” Lang pulled his head back a little, blinking. “I mean, that was a wetland. Full of endangered species, plus more that depended on those species, you know?”

            “Did you bury the victims in the drums on the property?”

            “No, of course not.” Lange laughed. “Nice try, though. No, we drove them back up to Westinghouse and buried them onsite. They were putting up a new building down there for some kind of new lab or something. They’re under the first basement subfloor. Southwest corner.”

            Sam made himself give a little laugh; he knew it was expected. “Because you had to get rid of the bodies, and the site was already contaminated. You had to do something with the waste product, after all. It wasn’t like you had a proper containment facility on speed dial.”

            Lange’s grin became genuine, almost relieved. “He told me you’d understand, Sam. It’s not that I doubted him, exactly. It’s just - well, you’re young. Raised in a very material world. I’m glad it didn’t get its claws into you too badly.”

            Sam forced a little smile. Bill couldn’t bring himself to act quite that much. “These copycats. You know anything about them?”

            “I’m not involved, if that’s what you mean. I’m pretty sure it’s just other believers, trying to reach out and feel what I felt. It’s not going to work. Someone else got the job done first, and there’s no need for him to reach out in quite that way. They’ll get something else, though. I’m not sure if it will be as good for them as what I got was good for me.”

            Something icy gripped Sam’s heart. “Hey, Mr. Lange?”

            “Call me Nick. Please.”

            “Nick.” Sam gave his very best patented shy smile. “How did you get the matches into the cell?”

            Lange winked. “Ah, Sam. It’s a gift.” He exhaled, and smoke came out of his nose.

            The guards reacted predictably to that. Sam and Bill got hustled out of the room with speeds usually reserved for hostage situations and Lange got tackled to the table, faced smashed into the metal. Sam tried not to think about the implications – for all anyone knew it was just some cheap parlor trick, nothing for anyone to get upset about.

            Of course, how often, in his history, had anything ever turned out to be just a cheap parlor trick?

            Once they were outside, Sam and Bill both had to take a minute to recover. Sam felt a bit better, knowing that Bill had just as much trouble dealing with Lange as he had. “Feeling better?” Bill asked him, face still ashen.

            “Ask me again after I’ve tried to sleep, sir.” He grimaced. “I think I’m going to need about sixty showers. Good thing the hot water in the dorm never runs out.”

            “I’d tell you that you get used to it, but that was above and beyond anything that I’ve ever experienced in all of my years of prosecuting. I’ve met serial killers, and I’ve met terrorists, but nothing like this.”

            Sam swallowed. He had seen things like this – not exactly like this, but not dissimilar either. “Glad he’s not par for the course, sir. But we did get something out of the trip.”

            “Nightmares to last us for the next fifty years?”

            “Possible closure for three families.” He tried to fake a grin.

            Bill called the office as he drove them back in, explaining about the bodies. Sam was glad for the lack of conversation; it gave him time to try to wrap his head around how he was going to explain this to Dean. How could he tell Dean that this really was a case, just as his brother had suspected, but that it somehow touched on Sam himself because whatever had been broadcasting signals on Serial Killer Radio had been talking about Sam himself? And how could he explain all of this to Dean and seriously expect him to not try to bring Dad in on the whole mess?

            When they got back to the office, Sam was instructed to write up a report on their visit with Lange. That he did, coincidentally keeping a copy for himself, while Bill worked to find information about missing workers from Sunnyvale in the seventies. Neither of them had been naïve enough to think that the workers would be working directly for Westinghouse, but a landscaping firm did file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau that a small firm it subcontracted with hadn’t turned in proof of completion.

            All things considered, Sam had to wonder if the subcontractors had legal documentation.

            Bill agreed. “A lot of people in that community won’t report crimes, and won’t report people missing. They’re afraid that they’ll be prosecuted themselves, because of their immigration status, and it leaves them vulnerable. The bad guys know it. I wonder if Lange would have been so callous about killing three American-born workers.”

            Sam gave half a grin. “Three American-born workers wouldn’t have been out in the middle of the night illegally dumping toxic waste in a legally preserved wetland. They wouldn’t have been asked to, and their union would’ve had a lot to say about it.”

            “Good point.” Bill massaged his temples. “They got ground-penetrating radar in. The metal in the drums lit up like a Christmas tree on the screen. It’s going to be kind of risky. That whole facility is a Superfund site; it’s heavily contaminated with PCBs. They’re going to have to be very careful with retrieving and processing the remains. But we do have a confession, so assuming that we can get an ID off the bodies or at least do a reconstruction of the faces, I think we can try to safely dispose of the remains and go from there. I mean what are we going to do, add another three consecutive life terms at the end of Lange’s sentence?” He shook his head.

            “It does seem a little redundant.” Sam shuddered. “Have we ever caught any of the copycat killers?”

            “One or two. Why?”

            “Do you think it would be helpful to speak with them, too? Make sure Lange is telling the truth?”

            Bill grinned, finally starting to get some of his color back. “Glad you’re not just taking his word for it, Sam. He’s charismatic, sure, but you’re not letting him sway you. That’s good.”

            Sam relaxed a little. He couldn’t bring Bill in on the secret; Bill didn’t need to know that he was checking for signs of supernatural involvement. It might have been useful for Bill to know, in that it might be good for him to know that all of these people shared the same delusion, but he’d think that Sam shared that same delusion and Sam didn’t need that kind of reference when it came time to apply for his next internship, or for law school. Still, he’d come up with a way to get what he wanted from Bill without giving anything up. That was good.

            Now he just needed to focus on a way to spill the beans to Dean.

 

John

 

            There was a lot about Neosho that John could have liked. He liked the flowers – well, he appreciated that Mary would have liked the flowers, which was about as close as he came to appreciating aesthetics these days anyway. The place had gotten some kind of grant about a bazillion years ago, or maybe just fifty, and they’d built all kind of flower boxes with them. From there, they’d developed some kind of a culture of beauty. People cared about how their front gardens looked, and they wanted them to be blanketed in color.

            Maybe that was the origin of this legend of the Jawbone Devil with the fondness for bees?

            Of course, he couldn’t see the flowers now, what with it being December and all. He could see dead grass, with a patch of snow here and there. Patches of old snow are never very appealing, covered in crusty gray bits and road grime. They contrasted sharply with the too-bright Christmas lights and inflatable Santas that replaced the floral displays on the expansive lawns.

            John hadn’t ever been Mr. Christmas. Even when he’d tried to do the Christmas thing for Mary’s sake, he’d had a hard time with some of the gaudier aspects of the holiday. Sure, pretty lights in a distant window might have a pleasant kind of feel to them, but the inflatable crap on a lawn? That had to come from some kind of trickster spirit. Either that or a poverty spirit – he’d seen a few of those in his day. The amount those things caused a family to spend in electricity alone…

            Well, they were one more thing to weigh a person back. Winchesters didn’t gt weighed down by material crap. They moved along, kept going. No attachments, no weights, no anything. A Winchester didn’t need anything but the hunt.

            Speaking of the hunt, that was something else that bugged John about Neosho, and this was something he could speak up about. “It’s never quiet here.”

            Tara raised an eyebrow at him as she closed the door to her truck. “’Scuse me?”

            “There’s got to be, what, thirteen springs here?” He closed his eyes and shook his head. Christ – thirteen. It might not mean anything. Then again, superstitions cropped up for a reason. “Water, especially a spring, is a powerful source of spiritual energy.”

            Tara pursed her lips. “I’ve probably heard that somewhere.” She leaned against his truck, long, lean body unconcerned about salt or dirt. “What’s that got to do with noise?”

            “Can’t you hear the springs? Jesus.”

            Tara listened for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I can hear it just a little bit. What’s the big deal? It sounds nice. Pleasant. Maybe a little romantic, almost.”

            He rolled his eyes. “Until you think about what’s got to be using all of that energy as a power source.” He glared at her. “Hunters don’t do romance, Tara.”

            “Not on the job, at least.” She smirked. “Come on. Let’s check into the motel and see what we can’t find out about this Jawbone Devil guy. Weeks said he’d call ahead to the historical society so we’ll see if he came through for us.”

            They checked in and ran out to the historical society, where a little old lady who might have survived Reconstruction greeted them with a broad smile and a shaky hand. Millicent Merten knew exactly where to find the archives they needed, but she didn’t quite trust herself with such heavy boxes these days and certainly not on a ladder; would he be a dear and carry them down for her?

            John tried to contain his temper through the slow but well-meaning lecture about wearing gloves and not having food or drink near the historical documents. He knew what he was doing, and anyway, this was about saving lives, not about damn pieces of paper.

            It took them a while to sift through the diaries of all of the various soldiers, civilians and teenaged girls who had been around Neosho during the aftermath of the Newtonia battles. “If I have to see one more sighing lament by a girl who wonders if her Cyrus truly loves her I think I’m going to scream,” Tara said, stretching from her table. “I’m not kidding. Either people were pretty uncreative with their names back in the day, which I know for a fact was not true, I mean in New York they had a guy whose name was Preserved Fish, no joke, or else this Cyrus guy really got around.” She glanced down at the diary before her. “And might or might not have secretly fathered half of the babies born in southwestern Missouri in 1865.”

            John thought about that one for a second. “That’s not a little disturbing, Tara.”

            “You’re telling me. Any luck on your end?”

            John waved a hand over his pile of documents. “I’ve got one doctor who is firmly convinced that he saw the Horsemen of the Apocalypse rise up from the ground and start chasing him.”

            “Any mention of a knife?”

            “A scythe.”

            “Not what we’ve been hearing about.”

            “No, it isn’t.” John scowled and grabbed the next item in his ‘to be read’ pile. This one was a leather-bound journal, not unlike his own. When he opened it up, he found himself feeling some hope. “Hey – remember that Masshole seminarian we read about back in wherever?”

            She threw a paper clip at him. “Sure.”

            “What was the name of that guy with him, the one who taught them to salt and burn the remains?” He moistened his dry lips. He knew better than to hope, but he couldn’t help the shaking of his hands as he flipped toward the back of the book.

            “Albert, I think.” Tara got up from her chair. “Why?”

            “I have here the journal of one ‘Albert Muller, Hunter.’ There’s a provenance card that says that it was found in the effects of Albert Mueller, Corporal, deceased, from the First Upstate Cavalry.” He found a page toward the back, edged in blood. “Here we go.”

            “ _Of demons I have seen plenty during this war. I wish I could say I was surprised, though I cannot. They are drawn to places of carnage like flies, and to the slaying of kin like no other. A conflict like this can only be as a banquet to their infernal appetites._

_“We have no way of killing them. They can only be exorcized and returned to the Abyss from whence they came. It must be enough, for now. Sometimes they leave the host body they stole a smoldering ruin; sometimes the victim can be saved. There is no way to predict how they will leave a host._

_“And yet, there is one who can kill them. He walks tall and disheveled, savage and uncouth. He is unshaven and untamed, and I cannot say whether or not he knows any language at all._

_“He approaches the legions of Hell with a singular purpose, disdaining all in his path that looks out at the world through clear eyes. He has a strange blade in his hand, that seems to be made of a jawbone, and it slays all that it touches. There is no saving the hosts. It is probably better for them this way; they do not need to recall the filth and corruption that invaded their flesh._

_“When he shows himself, there is no mercy. I should not like to be on the receiving end of his attack. He seems unconcerned about witnesses; I don’t know if he sees us at all, or if he plans to return and eliminate us later.”_ John looked up at Tara. “Well that’s not ominous or anything.

            “So this guy was a hunter back during the Civil War.” She shook her head. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

            He grimaced. “Not really. There’s always going to be evil. And there’s always going to be misinformation – I mean look at this guy. He thinks they’re demons.”

            She turned to face him full on. “And you don’t?”

            “Come on, Tara. I’ve seen a lot, but demons?” He snorted. “You going to tell me angels are watching over us, too?” He turned back to the journal. “He keeps going for a couple of entries. Seems he followed the Jawbone Devil west toward ‘Indian Territory,’ but was wounded and brought back to Neosho to die.” He flipped back to the provenance card. “Looks like he’s buried in the cemetery. Buried?”

            “Guess he wasn’t able to convince his buddies to salt and burn him proper.” Tara pulled her jacket closer to her. “Man that sucks. You think he really was a soldier, or that it was a pretext?”

            “I think a hunter should have known better than to get caught up in a war like that when he was already fighting a bigger one.” John sighed. “Who knows what he was thinking, though. Different people have different priorities, I guess. Says he followed the Jawbone Devil west, but all of the sightings have been in Missouri over the years. Or so you said.”

            “They’ve been farther east, too.” She bit her lip. “We need to find someone who’s good at research. Someone who can sift through all this crap, find something for us to go on.”

            John sighed. “I’ll see if Jim Murphy can find someone for us. There was someone I used to call for this kind of thing, assuming the records were digital, but I guess he’s sick or something.”

            “’Assuming the records are digital? The hell, that guy don’t travel?”

            “Apparently not.” John rolled his eyes. “He’s got things going on, or something like that.”

            She shrugged. “Some hunters stick close to home, I guess. More for us, right? Come on, let’s get back to the motel and see where we can go from here.”

            Back at the motel, the hunters split a pepperoni pizza and a few beers while John reached out to Jim. Jim wasn’t home, but John left him a message and settled back to talk with Tara, who was looking at him with a wry smirk on her face. “So. You’re not a believer, huh?”

            He snickered. “There are a bunch of things that I’m ‘not a believer’ in, Tara. I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.” He flipped the tab on his beer.

            “Demons. Come on, John. With everything we’ve seen, why not demons?”

            He sighed. “Okay. We’ve seen a lot of crap. I’ll give you that. And it’s evil. Every last bit of it is evil. Hunters are the only thing standing between humanity and all of the evil sons of bitches straining to get at our throats.” He took a gulp of his beer. “But demons – saying that demons are out there has a lot of baggage, Tara.”

            “Why does a demon have any baggage associated with it that a werewolf or a water spirit doesn’t have?” She grabbed at a runny piece of cheese off of her piece of pizza, before it could fall onto the ground. “That doesn’t make sense.”

            “Because demons imply the existence of Hell.” He leaned back in his chair. He’d had this argument with Pastor Jim and with Sam, with differing degrees of civility. Sometimes he felt like a broken record. “If there’s a Hell, that means that there’s some kind of… organization, some kind of structure. And of course, there’s the other side of it.”

            “The other side?” Tara asked, around a mouth full of pizza.

            He dampened his mouth with more beer. “If you accept the idea of Hell, of an intelligent master force that governs the forces of evil in that way, then you have to accept the idea of their opposite number. You have to accept the idea of angels, and of course you have to accept the idea of God.”

            She pursed her lips. “Is that such a bad thing? I mean, most people find the concept of God and Heaven to be comforting.”

            He huffed. “Yeah. Sure. Mary found it real comforting as she bled out over the baby’s crib. She was a big believer in God. Angels. The whole deal. She used to tell our oldest that angels were watching over him.” He drained the rest of his beer in one gulp. “For all the fucking good it did her.”

            Tara’s face twisted. “Sorry, John.” She turned her head away. “So your oldest – that’d be Dean, right?”

            At least she hadn’t tried the ‘everything happens for a reason,’ line, or “she’s in a better place now. “Yeah. Dean. He’s my right hand man, you know? I’d have been killed fifty times over if it wasn’t for him.”

            “And the other one?” She risked a glance back at John.

            “He’s a waste of space.” John grabbed himself another beer. “We don’t talk about that one.” God, Mary would be so disgusted if she could hear him now. “Anyway. If you accept one, you have to accept the other. And if there were angels, or whatever, what the hell’ve they been doing for the past four billion years, huh? If they were real, hunters wouldn’t need to exist. Angels would be doing the work for us – fighting evil, killing monsters. Humans would be safe to live human lives, raising families. Kids could grow up, go to school. Hell, go to college, if that’s where they wanted to be, you know? There wouldn’t be a war to fight.”

            Tara leaned back against the wall. “There might be something to that, I guess. I don’t know. I mean I’ve never come across a demon myself, but I know plenty of people that do believe in them without worrying about angels or anything. I suppose it’s possible they’re out there.” She grinned. “Maybe there was an apocalypse while no one was looking and we just missed it. Maybe the angels lost.”

            “That sure would explain a lot.” He chuckled.

            He steered the subject away from the subject of demons and angels and family. Tara didn’t seem too heartbroken about the change. If there was ever a touchy subject among hunters it was family, with religion a close second. It seemed to John like a lot of hunters had reasons to be angry with God, or the Gods if that was how their boats floated, and family was usually at the center of it. Instead, he talked about the Pied Piper.   Now _there_ was a case that deserved to be better known, if only for its weirdness, and it could have happened anywhere. Good thing Taurus had found him in time, found all of those kids in time.

            Tara then regaled John with a story about a krampus, or Bad Santa. John had heard about them before, but he’d never encountered one or met someone who had. It was good to get it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, so he’d know what to look for. As near as either of them could tell, the krampus seemed to be a kind of evil spirit that thrived on belief. They’d gotten to be so rare these days because of the lack of belief in the old myth, which suited John just fine. If one kind of evil died out all by its lonesome, who was he to complain about it? Either way, they could be gotten rid of through the usual means. Consecrated iron rounds would do the trick. Salt lines would keep them out, although he couldn’t think of anyone who would draw a ring of salt around their chimney and expect it to stay there.

            There were other ways to drive them away, methods only successful on a krampus. Apparently they found the sound of jingle bells, the toneless kind that were usually associated with “reindeer,” off-putting. The effect wasn’t limited to krampus; John himself was likely to run from the sound. Tara had fended one off with some gingerbread cookies, which she insisted weren’t hard enough to be used as pavers although they did work best when dipped in milk. “It wasn’t Aunt Ellie’s fault,” she added. “She never was much good for baking.”

            “Everyone has their own gifts,” John told her with a straight face. Mary could bake pie, and did that well. Anything else was kind of a lost cause – too salty, as he recalled, but they ate it anyway. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind, though.” He would, too. He might not be Kris Kringle, but he’d do anything in his power to make sure normal families got to have the merriest damn Christmas possible.

            Dean called after Tara explained away Aunt Ellie’s cookies. John left the room to take the call. “What is it, Dean?” John asked.

            Dean hesitated, and John sighed. Whatever it was that his boy had on his mind, Dean hadn’t thought it through. Which meant it was likely to piss John off. Which meant that it probably related to Sam.

            John was going to have to sit that old priest down and have a very long talk with him about interfering with his family. What was right for his congregation wasn’t necessarily right for the Winchesters. They weren’t part of any parish or community, and John would be the judge of what was right for them.

            “Just spit it out, Dean,” he directed, trying not to bark out his directive.

            “Dad, did you ever work any cases that had anything to do with the Lange murders out in Palo Alto all those years ago?” Dean’s voice sounded nervous. He also sounded perfectly clear, as though he were calling from someplace with no other people around.

            Like an empty dorm. Damn it.

            “Lange was a spree killer, son,” John told him. “I remember him. Managed to do his thing in that little window when the Supreme Court banned the death penalty in the US and when they let states decide to bring it back or not. Way I see it he probably should’ve fried.”

            Dean cleared his throat, a nervous tell he had that John should’ve trained out of him years ago. “Yeah, he’s one sick fucker. Er, bastard. Sorry, sir. Listen. He’s. Um. Here’s the thing. He knows about Sammy.”

            John took the phone away from his ear and looked at it. “What do you mean ‘knows about Sammy?’”

            “I mean he was sitting in his cell at San Quentin, set something on fire and offered details on another body dump if he got to talk to Sammy. Asked for him by name and everything. So you’ve never done work on hauntings there, or had to ask this guy for information for another case. Anything at all, dad. Even something small.”

            John chewed on the inside of his lip. “I’m telling you the truth, Dean. Until right now, Nicholas Lange was just another sick human in a long list of sick humans. As far as I was concerned.”

            Dean swallowed; John could hear the gulp. “Okay, sir. Thank you.”

            John hung up. What in the hell could a serial killer want with Sammy?

 

Dean

 

            Sam’s bitchface put all of his prior bitchfaces to shame. “I can’t believe you actually called him.”

            “It’s Dad, Sammy.” Dean hung his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. Christ, you’d think the kid might have grown up a little, what with having to live on his own for all these months and oh yeah getting mauled half to death because he didn’t have his family there to freaking protect him. But oh no, not Sammy. Months and months with no contact and it was right back to the same old song with him. “We can’t hide this kind of shit from him. You know that!”

            Sam leaned in, lightning fast and wicked. “Actually, you know what? ‘We’ can. Last time I checked the serial killer wasn’t asking for him, and he wasn’t asking for you. He was asking for me, which means that I get to make the decisions about who gets to be involved with the case.”

            Dean pulled back and stood up. “It doesn’t work like that, Sammy. You know it.”

            “It works exactly like that, Dean. That’s kind of the definition of ‘disown.’” Sammy ran his hands through that shaggy mop of his and tugged. “If I had to lose everything then I should be able to ditch the bad parts too.”

            Dean’s hands clenched themselves into fists; he didn’t think about it, he didn’t chose to, they just did it. Everything in him was screaming at him to take a swing at his brother, but he didn’t. He held back. The kid’s bones and guts were still supposedly knitting themselves back together or whatever, or so Pastor Jim had told him. He held back, but God the temptation was there. “First of all, you didn’t ‘lose’ shit, Sammy. You threw it away. Secondly, it’s not a ‘bad part’ when people are looking out for you and keeping you safe, got that?” He grabbed his jacket. “I’m going out. You stay here and research the case.” He needed air. He needed air, he needed beer, he needed a woman.

            He needed a distraction, was what he needed.

            Funny how all it took was for Sam to acknowledge that they were working a case for them to fall right back into the same old pattern.

            Sure, Dean could admit it to himself and the pavement as he stalked over to that pretend diner Sam had dragged him to. The pattern had always been the same. They got some information from their dad, or maybe some orders. Maybe a combination of the two. Then they fought about the orders. Dean went off, delivering orders of his own, because he couldn’t handle Sammy’s emo and Sammy’s bitchiness, and Sammy had to stay behind in the motel room because someone had to and Sammy’s job was research.

            And sure, he could kind of get Sam’s point of view. He’d always hated being left behind by their dad. Sammy had hated hunting, but damn, he sure had hated being locked into those rooms with no sunlight, no fresh air, no possibility for any kind of stimulation beyond whatever the shitty cable the motel owner might provide. But people were dying; sacrifices had to be made. And it wasn’t such a bad life. The family was together – well, sort of. They were together in spirit, if not in body. And Sam was safe.

            Dean slid into a seat in the diner without thinking about it. Tracy saw him and made her way over. “Hey.” She gave him a tired grin. “Is Sam coming too or…?”

            A little bit of rage welled up in Dean, even though he knew it was stupid. This was all backwards. He was the one women asked about, the one that waitresses looked for. Not Sammy. People weren’t supposed to notice Sammy. That had gone beyond one of those survival tactics, those things that Dad had drummed into them back in the old days when there had been things calling Sammy “special” lurking behind every frigging rock, and had just become a law of nature. None of the three of them questioned it anymore. “No,” he snapped, and then caught himself. “No, Sammy’s staying in tonight.” He forced himself to grin, one of those slow and sexy grins that usually had women eating out of his hand.

            Maybe it was the fact that this girl knew Sammy, had some kind of connection with him or whatever. Maybe it was the Stanford air. Either way, Tracy had some kind of mystic immunity to the Dean Winchester charm. “That’s too bad. Is he feeling okay? I know Brady’s worried about him. The doctors don’t want him exerting himself.”

            Dean huffed. Doctors never really got recovery, not on Winchester terms. “He’s fine. Just being an emo bitch, you know?”

            Her eyes narrowed, and he knew it had been the wrong thing to say. She slid into the booth. “You know, my shift just ended. I know everyone’s super curious about Sam. Maybe you can fill in some of the gaps for us.” Her light brown eyes flicked over to one of the other waitresses and the girl came over, taking their orders with a wink for Tracy.

            Shit.

            “Not much to say, you know?” Dean grinned. “He was always a kind of a boring kid, you know? Never did know how to have fun. Who’s this Brady?”

            Tracy gave him a feline smile. “Brady’s a friend of Sam’s. He’s been taking care of him since he got hurt. He takes care of him in general. Sam’s a bright guy. Scary smart, really. He’s not so great at taking care of himself, though.”

            “Should’ve thought of that before he took off, then.” Dean leaned back. “Look, Tracy, I’m sure you mean well. I don’t know what Sam’s told you about our family –“

            “He’s told us nothing. Absolutely nothing.” She gave him the shark-toothed smile of a courtroom veteran. “That’s why I’m here. I’m curious about a few things. A few of us are, to be honest. He has a hard time with sleep. Is that just because of the dorm or is that a chronic thing?”

            Dean knew that he should lie. He should tell her that it was because of the dorms, and honestly someone who’d grown up the way they both had probably shouldn’t be living in a dorm like that. Still, his utter shock at the implications of Tracy’s question almost made him snort beer out of his nose. “The hell does anyone know about how Sam sleeps? He’s got a single for crying out loud!”

            Tracy’s laugh was low and dirty. “Oh, come on now, Dean. A beautiful, talented young man like that shows up on campus – single and willing, with a room all to himself – and you think people aren’t going to be all over that?”  

            Dean looked down at his burger. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

            She laughed with her whole body, clapping her hands. “Does it bother you that much? That people find him attractive?”

            “He’s my little brother! My baby brother! I changed his diapers! And that was not fun, let me tell you!” He clutched at his stomach. “Look, Tracy –“

            “See, the thing is, Dean, he could have any girl he wanted on campus. He could have almost any guy he wanted on campus. I’ve seen them looking, and I don’t know for sure if he’d go there or not but if he wanted to he could. And the thing is, Dean, he doesn’t make a move. Even his hookups always come to him first.”

            “Maybe he’s just being polite.” Dean squirmed. He really, really wanted to get out of there.

            “He seems lonely. Did he have a girlfriend back wherever you all blew in from?” She took a bite of her salad, sprinkled liberally with some kind of sprouted thing that crunched from all the way across the table.

            “Sammy? Nah.” Dean took a drink of beer. “Winchesters don’t do that kind of thing.”

            She nodded. “Not ever?”

            “No. Not ever.”

            “So he’d never have had a chance to see someone else have a real relationship, see how one was supposed to work.”

            Dean put his food down and stopped the pretense. “What are you driving at? My dad always did the best he could.”

            Her lip curled a little – not in contempt, but maybe in confusion. “I’m sure he did. Some of us were wondering why he didn’t ask someone out, if he was so lonely. He’s attentive when he’s with someone, and he’s –“ She stopped herself with a sly little grin. “Well. You don’t want to hear about that. But we couldn’t quite put together that one missing piece of the puzzle. Thank you.”

            “Seriously? Tracy, just… no. I mean for one thing, you don’t need to go for a nerd, okay? You’re pretty, I’m sure they must have jocks at least around here somewhere, right?”

            Her expression frosted over. “Are you seriously trying to convince someone to not date your brother?”

            He sighed. Some days he felt impossibly young, and some days he felt like an eighty year old man. “It’s complicated, Tracy. It’s not that he’s not a good kid, because on some level he is. I mean he’s a total nerd, but that probably gets him a lot of points around here.”

            She nodded, eyes wide. “Well it is an Ivy so yeah. It does get him a point or two.”

            “Shut up.” He made a face. “I know it sounds bad, sour grapes and all, but there’s a reason it’s just not a good idea.”

            She shook her head. “I don’t get it. The guy is just about the sweetest guy I’ve ever met. He’s smart, he’s polite, he’s everything a girl would want to introduce to her parents. He got himself a full scholarship here, which he has to work his ass off to maintain by the way, and he’s still always around to help other people. Oh and he’s a goddamn hero.

            “But his own family wouldn’t have anything to do with him, even when he was dying in the hospital. You sent some priest instead. I mean any other family he’d be the golden child but your dad already showed up once wanting to kill him and now you show up and – well. What is it that you want from him, Dean?”

            He glared at her. Who the hell did she think she was, talking like she knew them, knew Sammy? “There ain’t a thing I want from him,” he said. “He invited me. I said yes so it wouldn’t make a scene. It was a mistake.” He stood up and grabbed some cash out of his wallet. He had no idea how much he threw down onto the table, if it was enough or too much or what. “That’s for the dinner. You don’t know us. Stay out of our business. And you stay the hell away from Sammy.” He left the diner.

            Once out, he found himself at odds and ends. He had no idea where to go or what to do now. He couldn’t face Sam again, not so soon after mixing it up with Tracy. Instead, he got into his car and drove back to the Couch house. Sure the place was still technically a crime scene, but they only had two cops guarding it. Dean could get around them in his sleep.

            The site had a different feel in the chilly December night. Sure, California was milder than just about anyplace else but it was still chilly; he could see his breath without worrying that a ghost was going to smack him around.

            The place smelled. He hadn’t had a chance to notice that before, but they hadn’t cleaned up the scene yet and it always smelled bad when you left blood lying around. The killer – or killers – had left some kind of markings on the wall, but they didn’t make a lot of sense and Dean didn’t want to risk getting the cop’s attention by taking pictures. If Sammy was taking this seriously, he’d already have copies of the crime scene pictures from the case file, because working with The Man had its privileges.

            The place was dusty, too. He could see regular old dust, because the place had been abandoned for close to three decades. He saw fingerprint powder in almost stratigraphic layers, because every time they had a new crime scene here they had to dust for new prints and over time that stuff built up. Eventually it would harden and freeze like that, make a fossil, and future archaeologists would think this had ben some great sacrificial center or something.

            Maybe it had been.

            Only… what could anyone have been sacrificing to? They had the usual graffiti about Satan, coupled with bad metal bands’ logos and good metal bands’ logos and honest-to-God Mr. Big lyrics. Dean shook his head. Satanists he could get. He might not agree with them, but he could get them. Folks who got high and thought Beavis and Butthead were the authorities on summoning the Dark Lord? Those folks needed to be stopped, pronto.

            He wasn’t going to find any physical clues to who the copycat might be, not with such a high profile case. Sammy had a good opinion of these cops, and considering how well the kid could clean them out of a crime scene, if he said that the guys were thorough and good, Dean would take his word for it.

            He did find a fine yellow powder over the mess, layered in with the stratigraphy of fingerprint powder like lasagna filling. Interesting. Closer examination and a very unpleasant sniff test proved the powder to be sulfur. Since when did the cops dust for anything with sulfur?

            Dean drove back to the dorm, where Sam had to let him in thanks to the snazzy security measures put in due to “non-custodial parents” on campus. _Thanks, Dad,_ Dean thought, and hated himself for it. Sam was still in his regular clothes, hadn’t even tried to change for bed, and greeted him with the bitchiest of bitch faces.

            Yeah, some things never changed. It was good to know that some things never would.

            “So. Tracy says not to bring you back to the diner, and that if they see you in there without me they’re calling the cops. What the hell did you do?”

            “Nothing, Sammy.” Dean gave Sam his best shit-eating grin. “I’m just looking out for my little bro. Listen, what do you know about sulfur?”

            Sam froze in the elevator. “Jesus Christ, Dean, tell me you didn’t go back to the Couch site.”

            “Well, okay, Sammy, but I’d be lyin’.”

            Sam closed his eyes and muttered in some language Dean had probably heard before and didn’t care about. Probably counting; Sam did that a lot when he was trying to control his temper. “Dean. That’s a crime scene. A very active crime scene in a case for which there are no suspects.” They entered the stairwell and started to climb. “If you contaminated the scene in any way, to include losing a single eyelash, you will risk letting a very human killer out onto the streets to kill over and over again.”

            “Oh come off it, Sammy! You know as well as I do that nothing human killed that poor kid!” Dean took the stairs two at a time and turned around to wait for Sam. Sam, who was dragging himself up the stairs like he had tractor tires tied to his heels. “What, a few stairs too much for you?”

            Something passed over Sammy’s face, and he gripped his side for a second, but he kept moving. “I’m fine, Dean. And actually, something human did kill that poor kid. They got DNA from under the kid’s fingernails. Purely human DNA. Nothing weird about it.” Sam grinned.

            Dean was so startled that he stopped in the middle of the staircase. “Huh.”

            “What, not expecting that?”

            “Well, no. I wasn’t.” Dean scratched his head. “The scene was covered in this yellow dust. Sulfur.”

            Sam made a face. “Sulfur is demonic. Nothing about this is demonic.” His breathing sounded labored.

            “Well I mean there’s a bunch of Satanic crap spray pained on the walls, but that’s not demonic?” Dean held the stairwell door open for his brother, who was definitely dragging now.

            “First of all, if song lyrics counted as demonic then the Impala would have horns and a tail ten times over. Secondly, Satan isn’t a demon.” Sam limped down the hall toward his room, clutching his side.

            “He’s not?”

            “He’s an angel.”


	4. God Rest You Merry Gentlemen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam makes some connections. John learns about bees. Dean learns something new, too.

Sam

 

            Friday morning came, and with it came a pounding headache. It was the kind of headache that reminded Sam of that time after he’d killed that _manananggal_ , back when he’d been all of twelve. Dean had snagged a bottle of Jack from God alone knew where and they’d sat up all night after John had taken off on yet another hunt and drank most of the thing, trying to erase the sight of the thing from behind their eyes. This time there hadn’t been any drinking, at least not by Sam. There had just been siting up too late, trying to do enough research.

            Wasn’t he supposed to have left this shit behind him?

            There was the internship, and he’d signed on for that side of things willingly. He and Bill were supposed to go and talk to some of the copycat killers, and he wanted to know as much as he possibly could about each case before he went in.

            There was the supernatural side to the Lange case. That Sam _hadn’t_ signed on for. On the one hand, here it was right in front of him. Lange himself was safely contained, but Sam couldn’t in good conscience ignore the overtones. He wouldn’t have wanted to get involved, but then Dean had showed up and everything just… went back to the same old crap.

            Everything, Sam noted with a grim twist of his lips, except Sam couldn’t pretend that it was their dad calling the shots here. Dad didn’t even know that they were together. For the first time, he had to acknowledge that it was just Dean riding him like this.

            That was because Dad was working his own case up in Missouri. Something involving demons, and a knife made from a jawbone that could kill anything in its path. Whatever, Sam thought with a roll of his eyes. Dad didn’t even believe in demons, but he was running across half-forgotten battlefields chasing after a mythic weapon to satisfy his thirst for revenge. Pastor Jim had sent him an email last night, apologizing for interfering in his recovery but asking him to take a “quick look” anyway.

            So Sam had to stay up all night, researching, before going in to work. Dean had slept. It wasn’t like there was more than one laptop, after all. And Sam hadn’t been all that keen on listening to more of Dean’s commentary anyway. “Don’t you think Dad would have told us about demons if they were real, Sammy?” Christ. Like Dad was the end-all, be-all, font-of-all-knowledge.

            Dad didn’t believe in demons, Sam knew, but Dad had been told about demons. He just rejected the idea. Plenty of other hunters believed. Sam believed. He didn’t need to have seen one or interacted with one to believe. There was too much evidence in favor. They were rare, sure, but they happened.

            Did it mean that demons were responsible for the Lange murders? Probably not. Lange had been perfectly in control of himself and hadn’t shown any kind of change in personality in thirty years that might suggest that the demon had gotten bored and left. Plus, Sam might be a little unclear on the finer points of restraining demons, but he still had a copy of the _Key of Solomon_ and he was pretty sure that a demon who didn’t want to hang around in prison wouldn’t do so.

            So something was at work here. Demons were probably not it.

            Dean bitched and moaned when Sam roused him to leave, but was ready to leave when Sam was. He dropped Sam off at work with minimal complaints about the research that Sam had managed to dig up for him, which felt like a minor miracle.

            Dean didn’t notice that Sam hadn’t slept, or if he did he just accepted it as part of the job and ignored it. It wasn’t as though he’d be allowed to sleep before the research was done if he’d been back with Dad, after all. Bill noticed – “You look like _Night of the Living Dead,_ kid!” – but chalked it up to a combination of the horror of dealing with a monster like Lange and a desire to impress.

            “Sam,” he said, tone gentle, “I get that you want to do a good job with this internship. I do. But you need to pace yourself. I understand that you’re still recovering from some pretty serious injuries and you’re not going to do anyone any good if you make yourself sick working yourself into the ground, okay?” He grinned and winked. “That’s for your first year out of law school, right?”

            Sam huffed out a grin. “Yes, sir.” It was nice that Bill cared. He had no idea what was going on, not really, but it was nice that he cared.

            There had been six copycat-type events since Lange’s brutal murders of the Couch family. Four of the killers were back up at San Quentin, so that was their first stop. He thought he imagined a little more grudging respect in the guards’ eyes when Sam showed up again, not cowed by yesterday’s display.

            The four cases followed similar lines. None of the men had bothered to appeal their convictions. Three had just pleaded guilty; they knew what they’d done and had more or less been caught red-handed. (One had literally been caught red-handed, because he simply hadn’t seen any difficulties for him in walking right up to a nearby house to ask for help bandaging injuries caused by one of his victims. His public defender had tried to mount an insanity defense on that basis alone, and Sam thought that if the killings had showed just a little less planning he’d have had a chance of pulling it off.)

            What Sam and Bill wanted to get at, if it was at all possible, was what tied the men together besides obvious. On the surface they’d all come from different backgrounds. Two used drugs heavily. Two didn’t use at all. One came from poverty so extreme it made the Winchesters look like the Rockefellers. One had been a trust fund baby with a different Mercedes for every day of the week.

            Sam and Bill sat down with each killer, and what surprised Sam the most was how easy it was to set up a rapport with them. Maybe it was because Sam knew that there was something behind these killing that these men might not grasp. Maybe it was because Sam himself didn’t exactly have clean hands. Maybe they were relaxed and comfortable because they had nothing to lose – they’d all given up on heir appeals, and weren’t going anywhere.

            Whatever the cause, they were perfectly willing to open up and answer whatever questions Sam posed. They didn’t get detailed about the killings, not unless Sam or Bill asked, but each man was frank about why they’d chosen the victims they had and why they’d decided to play copycat.

            “I was fascinated by Lange, back in the day,” said Wes Karlsson, who had been the first to follow in the footsteps of the master. “I remember seeing the trial on the news, hearing him talk about how he’d been guided. How he’d felt like he was being pulled toward something, I was so lost at the time, you know? My wife had just left me, on account of me being an abusive son of a bitch. The company I worked for had gone belly up and I just didn’t know what else to do, you know? Everything seemed so grim, so dark. And I figured, why not give in? Why not be a part of the solution instead of part of the problem? It seemed to make Lange pretty happy, anyway.”

            Sam shifted. “So you went and found a victim.”

            “Not a victim.” Karlsson leaned forward. “A sacrifice. It’s not like anyone was going to miss the bitch anyway, am I right? One more junkie hooker off the streets; she’d have been dead in a month anyway, one way or another.” He shrugged, eyes far away for a moment.

            Bill cleared his throat. “I’m curious. This didn’t come up during the investigation, but we’re considering some new avenues of inquiry in a current case. You were looking for something. Someone.”

            Karlsson grinned. “I was. I don’t think that I found what Lange found – we’re not on the same block, they try to keep him segregated on account of thinking humans are a pollution to the earth or something like that. But I found something. After the slut stopped twitching, I just stood there and watched for a minute, you know? I wanted to see if there was anything to what Lange had said.

            “And then, and then! Then this big, black, oily cloud, like smoke, came billowing into the room. It stank, too, like rotten eggs. And it blew right into the dead skank! She sat up and she looked the same, except her eyes looked like coal, you know?” He looked down and away, blushing. “Y’all are going to think I’m crazy.”

            “It doesn’t matter what we think, Mr. Karlsson,” Sam said, leaning forward a little bit and giving his most reassuring smile. “What’s important is what you experienced. And how that compares to what other people experienced.”

            “You think there’s something funny going on at that old place? Like chemicals or something?” Karlsson blinked a few times.

            “Anything’s possible, Mr. Karlsson. We’re still investigating right now.” Bill gave a professional smile.

            Karlsson pursed his lips and stroked his chin. “Well, okay. The bitch sat up and looked at me with those coal-black eyes and she said, ‘I’m probably not exactly what you were looking for. But I’m real glad I’m here.’” Then she winked, gave me a kiss on the lips and let me tell you, getting a kiss from a corpse is not fun, and then she threw her head back. She gave this loud scream and puked that black smoke right back out. The skank fell back down, back to being deader than a doornail.” He shuddered. “I stabbed her a few more times just to be sure, because that was just nasty.”

            Sam nodded. “That’s why the overkill.”

            “That’s why the overkill,” the murderer beamed. “All I was planning to do was cut her throat. All I did do was to cut her throat, at first.”

            “But then you got scared.” Bill pulled back.

            “Wouldn’t you?” Karlsson shuddered. “I don’t mind telling you, I’ve seen a lot of shit in this joint. A lot of scary, turn-your-hair-white shit. After seeing that? Ain’t nothing in here that’s ever going to make me blink, you understand what I’m saying?”

            Sam and Bill both nodded. They got it, Sam maybe a little better than Bill. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Karlsson,” Sam said.

            The others told similar stories. Whatever they’d done, whatever Lange had set up at the house, they’d summoned _something_. Sam just needed to figure out what.

            After their field trip to San Quentin, Bill and Sam stopped for lunch. “So that was illuminating,” his boss commented as they sat in a little café. “Shared delusion on the part of all of the perpetrators. Thoughts?”

            “Well, I’m not a psych major, but every one of them knew that murder was wrong when they went in there. This new information doesn’t change that, doesn’t alter their pleas or the results of their trials in any way.” Sam shrugged and ate his salad. “The hallucinations happened after the fact, and I think there’s a real case to be made for the hallucinations being influenced by reports of the Lange trial. They expected to see something otherworldly, so they did.” He bit the inside of his cheek. Bill was a civilian; he couldn’t explain what was really going on.

            “I think you’re right there.” Bill sighed. “I still think it’s kind of strange that they all entered into this… bizarre demon-worship delusion independently, at separate times and places. And had similar but different experiences.”

            Sam shuffled through his mental deck of knowledge about witchcraft and other kinds of spellwork. There wasn’t much there for him to sift through, but he knew where he could go for more. “I guess that they must have filtered what they’d heard through their own expectations and mental lenses and whatever.” He stifled a yawn. “You know what struck me though?”

            “The fact that four men, independent of each other, saw what Nicholas Lange put that family through and saw what Lange was like and said, ‘Hey, I want in on that, give me some?’” Bill made a face at his burger and put it down.

            Sam considered. That should have surprised him more than it did. “That too,” he lied. “It’s the whole… Lange said he felt light, calm and cold. These other people aren’t talking about anything like what Lange experienced. Nothing _at all_ like what Lange saw, or felt, or anything.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make sense and I don’t like it.”

            “Fortunately, these guys are all locked away.” Bill picked up his sandwich again.

            “They are. Except for the latest one to pick up the mantle.” Sam sipped from his water.

            Bill didn’t have a response to that.

            Dean picked Sam up after work, as usual. “Come on, Sammy. We’ve got a graveyard to go stake out.”

            Sam just glared at him. “Am I allowed to go and change my clothes first, Dad?”

            Dean rolled his eyes. “Aw, pretty princess can’t risk his precious monkey suit?”

            “Considering that my job requires professional attire, no. I can’t.” Sam glowered. “Why are we hanging around in a graveyard anyway? There is literally nothing about this case to suggest that we’re looking at a ghost.”

            “So what do you think we’re looking at, college boy?”

            Sam closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten. “I don’t know yet, Dean. That’s why it’s research. But what I do know is that it involves summoning –“

            “Ghosts can be summoned,” Dean said, sticking out his chin.

            “And spellwork on a scale that lasts for decades. Which, for the record, isn’t something that we should be going to a graveyard to deal with and sure as hell isn’t something that we should be half-assing a solution to.” Sam turned to face his brother. “I get that you want to get this job over with and get the hell out of Dodge. I do. Maybe you want to put this out to some different hunters. I don’t know.”

            “Sammy,” Dean sighed. “We can’t do that. Let’s just do the job, alright?” He thumped his head against the window. “I mean, Dad already knows I’m here and everything; might as well get through it.”

            “Then let’s not do it stupidly, Dean. Christ, you’re smarter than that. And we both know it.” Sam glared. “I know you want to get out of here but you leaving in a body bag isn’t going to impress Dad and it’s not going to get the job done, alright?”

            Dean fell silent for a few moments as he steered the giant old car down the city streets. “It ain’t like that, Sammy.”

            Sam bit his tongue. It was exactly like that. Being here, being around him, had to be giving Dean hives. Dean had taken care of him, when he’d been a really little kid, but at the end of the day Dean was John’s creature. He’d always choose John, no matter what, and Sam had been foolish to think that there might be a trace of anything left. Both feet in, that had always been John’s motto, and Dean had bought into it with every fiber of his being.

            So sure, Dean had taken care of Sam when he’d been a little kid. And maybe he’d felt something then. Hell, maybe he’d felt something when Sam left, but now? Now it was all John. Sam needed to stop being a selfish dick and stop hoping for any kind of reconciliation.

            “Why did you think that it might involve a ghost?” he asked instead, trying to keep the judgement out of his voice. Dean hadn’t been at San Quentin with him, after all. He hadn’t been able to listen to those serial killers.

            Dean swallowed. “Ghost possession. Dad and I worked a case; I don’t think we told you anything about it. I think you were back in Red Oak, might have been five or six years ago.” He shrugged. “Dad didn’t think you needed to know about it. Anyway, I figured that it might be the ghost of one of Lange’s victims, lashing out.”

            Sam pressed his lips together. One more “Dad and Dean” thing from which Sam had been excluded. One more “need to know” action that Sam could never be read in on, because he was too dirty, too stupid, too unlovable, too _other_ to ever be a part of what real Winchesters did. Couldn’t even be told about them, because he wasn’t expected to ever need to think for himself, but they couldn’t understand how he could ever want to leave. He inhaled for four seconds, exhaled for seven. “That would have been a plausible theory,” he told his brother. “I’ve seen ghost possession before, actually.”

            “Seriously?” Dean scoffed. “Where, _Ghostbusters_?”

            Sam ignored him. “The thing is, all of the killers made their choices consciously. They wanted to kill. When they did, they activated the spell that Lange was trying to set off.” He described what each of the killers he’d interviewed had experienced during their crimes. “That’s not a ghost. There’s no drop in temperature. I’ve got some research to do back here to figure out what it could be.”

            Dean made a face, like he’d bitten into something rancid. “I guess not. The thing didn’t possess the killers, either. It possessed the victims.”

            Sam nodded.   “What we need to do is figure out how to dismantle Lange’s original spell.”

 

 

John

 

            Jim Murphy called John back the next day. “Okay. I’m not thrilled about having had to go to Taurus for this, but I didn’t think that there were a lot of other options all things considered.”

            John smirked into his coffee. “I thought you said the little princess had a cold or something.”

            “It’s more than a cold, Johnny. The kid was dying, okay? He’s recovering, but he needs his rest, not to be killing himself for you and everyone else.” Jim stopped himself, and John could just envision him biting his tongue. “But if you’re digging into demonic business, you should probably have as many resources at your disposal as humanly possible.”

            “Pun intended?”

            “This isn’t a laughing matter, John.” Jim got himself under control again, and John smothered a chuckle. Needling the priest was fun. “So he stayed up literally all night to dig this up for you, and it’s a real stroke of luck that these archives have been digitized. We’ve got a few different sightings of your boy, all the way through Missouri, spreading out over the state of Missouri. Oddly enough, it seems like Missouri is a hotbed for demonic activity.”

            John rolled his eyes but held his tongue. Let the priest have his fairy stories; everyone had their own comfort mechanism. “Why do you think that is?”

            “Not really sure. It’s not like they’re common anywhere, but they’re twice as likely to show up in Missouri as anyplace else in the US. Anyway, the most recent sighting for your boy was in Poplar Bluff.”

            John let out a little growl of frustration. “That’s clear across the state, padre.”

            “Just about.”

            John hung his head. It wasn’t that he minded driving; he just didn’t like any further delay. “I’m getting closer,” he confided. “I can feel it. I can almost taste it, Jim.”

            “Be careful, John. Something like that – well, it’s bound to attract attention.”

            John stroked his cheek. He should get around to trimming his beard; it was getting out of control. Soon people would mistake him for the Jawbone Devil. “While I’ve got you here, Padre, I meant to ask you something.”

            “You usually do, John.”

            John let the ghost of a grin pass over his face, here in the safety of his motel room where no one could see it. “Seems that Dean’s picked up a job.”

            “I sent him out on a job, John. He was wearing out a hole in the carpet.”

            “The rectory doesn’t have a carpet, Jim.”

            “You know what I mean.”

            “And you know what I mean, Jim. The job just happened to be in Palo Alto. You expect me to just swallow it?”

            “Actually yeah, I do. You can look it up yourself; it’s a legitimate job that needed a high-quality hunter to go and look into it. It’s not like Palo Alto disappeared from the map just because Sam decided to go to college there.”

            John punched the wall, but didn’t let his rage show through in his voice. “And there were no other hunters you could have aimed at that job?”

            “None that were climbing the rectory walls, John.”

            “They’re not supposed to be associating. You know this.”

            “I don’t know that they are, Johnny. I know that Sammy got some kind of prestigious internship for the winter break and sure as he- sure as heck doesn’t have time for hunting. I don’t see that as sitting well with Dean, so even if they were to run into each other in the street or something I don’t see it going well. Maybe you should dial back the possessiveness back a few notches. Dean’s yours. He made his choice.”

            John did growl out loud this time. “You have no right to interfere in how I raise my boys, Murphy.”

            The priest gave an ancient-sounding sigh. “First of all, they’re nineteen and twenty-three. They’re adults, John. They can associate with whomsoever they please. Secondly, I’m not one of your soldiers and I’m not going to sit there and enforce your absurd banishments and weird little rules. If you abandon Dean at my place and he asks for a job, I’m going to find him a job and I’m not going to worry too much about whether or not it will offend your delicate sensibilities.”

            John snarled into the phone. “Now see here –” But there was no response. Jim had hung up.

            Damn it.

            John rubbed at his face for a moment. At least Dean hadn’t sought his brother out. Sure he hadn’t intended for Dean to cut off all contact, but that didn’t mean John wanted a rapprochement.

            At the same time, what was he so afraid of? Jim was right. Dean had made his choice. Sam had encouraged Dean to mutiny, to follow his insubordinate ass off to California, but Dean had done the right thing and turned his back. Dean had done nothing but demonstrate his loyalty to John, time and time again. Letting him see Sammy again wouldn’t be the end of the world. If nothing else, it would drive Dean further into John’s arms.

            And Sam – what would the effect be on him? Would he wise up and come back to his family, hat in hand? John didn’t know if he’d let him back. The kid had run away too often; he couldn’t be trusted anymore. It was just too much to be born. The kid had made his own bed and had to lie in it.

            What would Mary think? Would she stand by his side, presenting a unified front against the son who had abandoned his family the same way John’s father had? Or would she instead turn those beautiful eyes on him in disappointment at having raised a son who could so callously walk away from the family?

            No, Mary wouldn’t blame John for how Sam had turned out. That much John could be sure of. Maybe John had made some mistakes, but for the most part John had been forced to make hard choices. He couldn’t just sit back and indulge the brat; Mary came first. Sam was just defective, selfish. He couldn’t see past his own petty desires to sacrifice for his mother.

            So no. Even if Sam wanted to come back, John wouldn’t let him. Let him make his own way in the world. John was done trying to protect him, coddle him against everything that was out there. Let it devour him. If he couldn’t bring himself to care about the woman who had died in his very room, John couldn’t bring himself to care about Sam.

            He wouldn’t deny, though, that he felt a certain pleasure in the thought of Sam pleading to return. Bridges that have been burned to ash can’t be rebuilt.

            The thought of a serial killer asking for Sammy, though – that was a little too weird, a little too much. He didn’t care what happened to Sam, of course – if Sam wasn’t going to live by his rules he wasn’t obligated to give a crap about him. But the idea that someone who’d been trapped in a tiny concrete room for ten years longer than Sam had been alive somehow knew who his son was – well that was a little too much of a coincidence for John. It reminded him too much of those folks who liked to tell him how _special_ Sam was, back when he was a tiny little thing.

            Well, there was nothing he could do about it right now. Sam was cut off, and if the serial killer could somehow affect maters outside his cell then Sam would have to deal with it as best he could. Dean would have to handle the case alone. He was more than capable; he’d been hunting, in essence, just as long as John had. If John could find this magical knife and kill whatever had killed Mary, maybe that would take care of whatever was so “special” about Sammy too and everything would be moot.

            He called Tara in the next room and told her what Jim had found out for him. She groaned, not liking the idea of the long drive, but she was ready and available when the time came to leave. It took them five hours to cross Missouri, five of the dullest hours that John had ever passed, and he wasn’t sorry to see the “Welcome to Poplar Bluff” sign pop up in the distance.

            They found a motel and started their reconnaissance. Fortunately for John, Tara had no objection to gathering information the way he liked: in a local roadhouse. He needed to pick up some funds anyway; she probably wouldn’t mind the same. While he played some pool, he asked around about odd weather or bee behavior in the area. It seemed like a long shot, but it was better than fighting with Jim again.

            Most people had something to say about weather, although none of it was the kind of thing that screamed “weird” to John. The bees, though – that was a different story. Local beekeepers had been in a panic all year. Apparently the bulk of the bee population had just up and moved out of their hives one day. No one had been able to come up with any kind of explanation, and it wasn’t like they had trackers or anything. They’d just disappeared.

            Oh, there were theories, all right. Some people thought that they’d fallen victim to pesticides. Others blamed genetically modified crops. Still more pointed fingers at hive vandals, accusing neighbors of somehow poisoning their hives.

            One friendly soul blamed aliens. Really.

            John kept his face neutral and friendly, and thanked Timo Kitchens’ high credit score for keeping the friendly free beers flowing. How he’d managed to find the one roadhouse in all of Missouri that catered to beekeepers he had no idea, and he still hadn’t decided if it was a good or a bad thing yet. Still, it confirmed that this Jawbone Devil was in the area, assuming that the guy was the one responsible for the bee thing.

            John had always tried to drum into his boys that no detail was too small to be meaningful. Sometimes a ghost or spirit was tethered to something tiny, or so minor that it seemed insignificant. He knew that most hunters wouldn’t have thought much about bees. Hell, he wouldn’t have thought about the bees, if those old journals hadn’t mentioned them. Flies were often associated with evil, but bees?

            So he paid attention to every little detail around him in the roadhouse as he paid for beers by the pitcher. He noticed that the beekeepers of Poplar Bluff were suspicious of one another, but generally open and friendly. He also noticed that there were a couple of people who seemed to be spending a lot more time listening than talking.

            He signaled Tara with his eyes and tried to indicate that she should keep an eye on them. He hadn’t worked with her long enough to have much confidence that she would get it, but it was worth a shot. To her credit, she seemed to pick up his meaning easily, following one of them – a shorter man, with dark hair and a red-and-green plaid shirt – out into the parking lot.

            “Do you know that guy?” John asked his nearest neighbor.

            “Yeah, that’s Andrew, Mike Turley’s boy.” The neighbor made a face. “About a year ago he got real into the whiskey, you know? It’s too bad. He was a nice kid, but he ain’t a nice drunk.”

            John shook his head. “That’s a shame.”

            “Yeah. Well.” He shrugged. “It happens. I know it ain’t supportive, but I could do with seeing a lot less of him around here, if you know what I mean. He should go get himself sobered up, not take his problems out on the rest of us.”

            John pursed his lips. “You’re probably right.”

            “Needs a shower too,” the older man continued, even as John sought an exit strategy for the conversation. “Boy smells like swamp gas.”

            John raised an eyebrow at that, but he didn’t say anything. He just paid for his informant’s drink and made as graceful an exit as he could.

            He found Tara alone in the parking lot. “He was right here,” she told him, frustration making her voice a little growlier than it should have been. “Look. You can see his footprints in the snow.”

            John looked. There, in the light dusting of snow, were the footprints Tara indicated. Just as she’d said, they ended suddenly. There were no tire tracks to indicate that he’d gotten into a car, no smudging to suggest he’d walked backward (which Tara would have seen anyway). As near as he could tell, the man had just disappeared.

            He cursed, and then squatted down in the snow. “How about that?”

            “What?” Tara bent down to see what he was looking at.

            “Yellow dust. How much do you want to bet that it smells like swamp gas?”

            Tara smirked at him. “I think we’ve learned as much as we’re going to get here. Regroup and plan back at the motel?”

            John nodded, mind racing.

            He didn’t believe in demons. You’d have to be kind of soft to believe in demons, for all of the reasons he’d already described to Tara. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t believe in evil or in evil spirits. He’d seen the effects of holy water on creatures of evil before, true evil, not werewolves and the like.

            They drew up their plan that night. The next day they got breakfast, and then John re-filled his holy water flasks. Tara followed suit; the Catholic church in Poplar Bluff was unlocked and sparsely populated. Then they started tracking down Andrew Turley.

            Andrew wasn’t hard to track down, as it turned out. He had a list of four different bars he liked to visit. One of them opened up at noon; John and Tara were there waiting for him when he arrived, before he got to the front door.

            He leered up at the hunters when he saw them. “Well well well. If it isn’t Little Johnny Winchester. I have to say, I’m surprised to see you around these parts. I’m not what you’re hunting, John-boy. I had nothing to do with your pretty little wife’s death.” He sneered, and his eyes went from bloodshot and blue to coal-black, even the sclera.

            Tara gasped. “What are you?”

            Andrew gestured, and Tara flew into John’s truck and went still. “I have an idea, Johnny. How about you and me have a nice little chat? I’m pretty sure that we’re looking for the same thing here. You don’t splash any of that holy water on me, and I won’t floss my teeth with your intestines. Sound like a plan?”

            John scowled at him. “What makes you think that we’ve got anything at all in common?”

            “You wouldn’t be anywhere near Poplar Bluff if you weren’t looking for the man with the jawbone knife, John.” Andrew snorted. “Give me some credit, here. You don’t expect me to believe you really came here for the Annual Poplar Bluff Beekeeper Meetup, did you?”

            “Would’ve been nice,” John grumbled. “What about her?”

            “The blonde?” He waved a hand, and Tara and her truck disappeared. “Safe at your motel. No worries. Let’s sit down and have a drink.”

            John hesitated. He wasn’t sure what Andrew had become, but he knew it wasn’t good. He could smell the stink wafting off the guy, like the burst from a fresh-lit match. It gave him an uneasy feeling, deep inside his chest, to even be speaking with the man.

            At the same time, maybe Andrew had the key. If Andrew could give him a lead on this famous or infamous magic knife, maybe John could have a chance at getting revenge for Mary. Maybe this whole thing, this whole nightmare, could finally be over. “Fine,” he said. “But you’re buying.”

            The thing that had once been Andrew Turley cackled. “Oh, Johnny. You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that.”

 

Dean

 

            Dean’s phone rang as he sat in Sam’s room and tried to find a good porn site that he could slip through the firewall Sam had set up on his network. He grinned when he saw the name on the caller ID. “Hey, Pastor Jim,” he said. “How’s it going?”

            Exhaustion shot through Jim’s voice like cracks in glass. “I just spent a good chunk of time getting chewed out by your father for ‘allowing’ you to work with your brother on the case I gave you, Dean. Was it absolutely necessary to involve him?”

            “It’s Dad, Pastor Jim.” He closed his eyes. Why did people keep trying to drive a wedge between Dean and his dad? The man was all he had left, for crying out loud! “Not just that, but the serial killer who started the whole ball rolling asked for Sammy specifically. Yeah it was ‘absolutely necessary to involve him.’” He rolled his eyes.

            “I just hope you’re prepared for the consequences with your father, that’s all. He’s not going to let you spend as much time here, that’s for certain.” Jim sighed.

            “It’s Dad, sir.” He sat up, ignoring Sam’s furious glare. “Did you know?”

            “Did I know what?”

            “Did you know that the case would involve Sammy somehow?”

            “No, Dean, I did not. I might have hoped that you’d go out for a coffee with your brother but I did not know that your brother would be involved with the Lange case. Not that it matters now.” He slurped something from a cup, and Dean made a face. It wasn’t like Jim to be drinking coffee this late in the day. “Please tell me you’re not making Sam work with you on this case.”

            “Jesus, PJ, you make it sound like I’m cracking a whip over him or something. He’s just doing research, for crying out loud.”

            “On top of his internship,” Jim pointed out. “And his side job. And whatever else he’s got going on. He’s supposed to still be resting, Dean. I’ve spoken with his doctors, I’ve spoken with his counselor, I’ve spoken with Brady –“

            “Brady again,” Dean growled. He couldn’t miss the way Sam tensed. What was that supposed to mean, anyway? “And counselor? What the hell? We’re hunters. We don’t do counseling. We do whiskey.”

            “It’s Sam’s story to tell. Assuming you ask.” Jim sounded peeved now. “Just stop running him into the ground, Dean. He’s not ready to return to the field.”

            “Who’s putting him in the field?” Dean rolled his eyes and pretended he hadn’t just tried to make Sam go digging up graves that same night. “The work needs to get done, Jim, and he’s got the access to get the information. I would have gone digging up murder victims, thinking it was ghost possession, if Sam hadn’t already spoken to the killers.” A thought occurred to him. “And hey – it’s not like I’m the only one asking him to do things.”

            “And I shouldn’t have asked. One favor is different from asking him to jump right back into the middle of a hunt.” Jim slurped at his drink again, whatever it was. “Winchesters, honestly. Just leave your brother out of it, Dean.”

            “He’s my brother.”

            “’He’s’ right here, asshat.” Sam threw a paper clip at him from the desk, managing to hit Dean right in the nipple.

            “At least your aim hasn’t suffered, bitch,” Dean shot back. “Look, PJ, Sammy’s fine. If at some point he stops being fine, I’ll take care of it, don’t worry. Thanks for checking in. I’ll give you a call sometime soon.” He hung up the phone.

            Sam gave him a look of unspeakable disgust. “Did you seriously just hang up on Pastor Jim?”

            Dean shrugged. “He needed some cool-down time. Thinks I’m overworking you.” Sam didn’t respond, and Dean looked, really looked at his brother for he first time.

            Sam had grown since coming to Stanford, maybe a little bit. He was also pale, with huge dark circles under his eyes. He’d always been hard lines and angles, but now his cheekbones could have sliced bread; his jawline could have sliced meat. He sat at his desk in old jeans that he could swim in now, and a tee shirt that hung off of him like stretched out skin. “Christ, Sammy, no wonder he’s all in a tizzy,” Dean blurted. “You can’t even take care of yourself without someone riding your ass and making sure you eat and sleep!”

            Sam glared. “It wasn’t my idea to not sleep,” he snapped. “And oh yeah, the only decent place nearby that isn’t shutting down for winter break and won’t break the bank just blacklisted us because you did _something_ that pissed Tracy off so bad they won’t let you in the door.”

            Dean blushed. Maybe he had gotten a little out of hand at the diner. “So Jim said something about counseling?”

            Sam broke his pencil, but kept his countenance otherwise. “Apparently when civilians encounter something traumatic, like a mountain lion attack that kills one of their friends and mauls another one, the school makes them go to counseling.”

            “Should’ve told them to fuck off, Sammy.” Dean shook his head. “We don’t need that kind of attention.”

            Sam just rolled his eyes in that way that only Sam could. “I’m nineteen, Dean. It’s not like DSS is going to come and whisk me away, and even if they could, Dad’s stunt back in October would’ve brought them in before anything I said to Dr. Coryell. Funny thing, though.”

            Dean glared. “Nothing funny about it, Sammy.”

            “Dude’s a hunter. Was a hunter; he’s retired now.” Sam shook his head, grinning. “Never thought I’d see the day when I could say, ‘yeah, that scar came from a black dog, and those came from a fire elemental,’ and not get locked up because of it.”

            Dean frowned. “Was a hunter? How come he quit?”

            Sam looked out the window. “I guess he figured he could do more good this way. I like him. I think he’s been good for me.”

            Dean stood up and paced. “What, he sits there and makes you feel good about leaving your family when they needed you?”

            Sam pressed his lips together. “You guys never needed me, Dean. That’s a huge part of why I’m here now. And it’s okay. We can’t change the past, even if we wanted to, so let’s move forward, okay?” He gestured toward the screen.

            Dean took a deep breath. Dad hadn’t ever gained anything by shouting at Sammy. He sure wasn’t going to get anything out of raising his voice now that Sam had a bunch of forked tongues with ivy league degrees behind them whispering in his ear. “So who’s this Brady character?”

            Sam stiffened again. “Why do you ask?”

            Dean watched his brother’s eyes carefully as he replied. “No particular reason. I’ve just heard his name a few times. People keep telling me that he looks out for you, but he can’t be doing much of a job if you’re not eating.”

            Sam rolled his eyes. “Dean, I was in the hospital for weeks and I haven’t been able to work out much since then. It’s not that I’m not eating, it’s that I can’t work out like I want to.”

            “What, you afraid you’re going to lose your girlish figure?”

            Sam moved away from Dean. Did he even know he was doing it? “I’m fine, Dean.”

            Dean held out his hand to his brother. “Of course you are. If you’re fine, come out with me tonight.”

            “Dean…”

            “Come out and we’ll get real food, okay? We’ll hit a real bar, get something with some real substance behind it that will provide actual nourishment, and maybe we’ll have a little bit of fun.”

            “I’m tired, Dean. I didn’t sleep at all last night, I didn’t sleep all that great the night before, I’m still recovering –“

            “Just a few hours, Sammy.”

            Sam closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands. “I’m not going to get any say in the matter, am I?”

            “Nope.” Dean grinned, and Sam groaned.

            He drove them out of town, far enough that Sam’s fake ID wouldn’t give them any trouble and that Dean’s temper wouldn’t be rubbed the wrong way by the mere presence of Stanford. He settled on Half Moon Bay as someplace appropriate for a night out on the town: they had plenty of places to eat, and plenty of bars that catered both to tourists and to the particular needs of Winchesters in need of a few bucks.

            Getting food into Sammy proved more difficult than Dean would have liked, but it wasn’t like Dean wasn’t used to it by now. He managed to coax him into eating a little bit of turkey chili, which seemed like nothing less than a miracle, and when they hit the bars it almost seemed like old times. For all Sam’s bitching and moaning about wanting to do things “the right way,” he cleaned up at the dartboard and made a tidy sum at the pool table. Dean had his fun at the poker table for a while, before he met Jenny.

            Jenny was blonde. Jenny was wearing a festive red shirt that said “Jingle My Bells” and a short denim skirt. Jenny was friendly. Jenny was more than happy to retreat to the Impala for a little while, and Dean was more than happy to get distracted by her hands and her mouth and her jingle-bell laugh.

            He came back inside to find Sam half asleep in the corner, glued to his smartphone in some kind of desperate attempt to stay awake. The kid really looked like crap. He hadn’t even touched his beer, and what kind of college freshman didn’t drink his beer?

            One who was sick, and one who was exhausted. That was who.

            Now Dean felt like crap.

            He crept over to the table where Sam swayed on his stool. “Come on, Sasquatch. Time to go.”

            Sam glared and wrinkled his nose, but didn’t say anything. He just stumbled along after his brother and rolled down the window when he got into the car.

            Dean laughed, but Sam wasn’t there to hear him. He passed out before the car even started moving.

            Getting Sam into the dorm was an adventure in and of itself, but Dean kind of felt like he deserved it. Sam hadn’t wanted to go out. He’d told Dean he wasn’t up to it, but Dean had made him go anyway. Now he just had to get Sam into bed.

            Just before Dean was about to turn the lights out for himself, Sam’s phone buzzed. Dean had never been particularly concerned with issues of personal privacy. He picked it up, only to see an incoming message from “Brady.”

            _You OK? Your brother let you go to bed yet?_

            Dean made a face at the screen. What did this Brady guy know?

            No more than what Sam had told him. Well, and what he’d seen from Dad, but Dean wasn’t going to think about that.

            _This is Dean. Just got Sam home to bed. Who are you?_

_A friend of Sam’s. You stole my roommate’s bed to use while you’re staying there._ There was a pause, and Dean tried to remember the other side of the room. It had been a little messy, cluttered with stuff. Normal. _What do you want from Sam?_

            _I want to see my brother. I’m allowed._

            Silence. Then, _Don’t hurt him. He’s helped a lot of people._

What the hell did Brady know? Only – hadn’t Jim mentioned something about a bunch of people being with Sam when the owl-men attacked? _Were you there when the mountain lions attacked?_

_Yeah. A bunch of us were. Sam saved us all._

            Dean took a deep, shuddering breath. _I guess he did. He’s a little tired; I think he overdid it. I’m going to try to get him to relax a little bit tomorrow. That never was his strong suit._

_No. Speaks how many languages and can’t say ‘rest’ in any of them? Only thing that comes closest is distracting him._

Dean chuckled softly to himself. _All the cute girls have gone home except Tracy and I think I really pissed her off._

_She’ll forgive him almost anything if he stays the night with her just one more time, and I’m sure not going to raise any objections._

            Dean stared at the phone. Was Brady implying what Dean thought he was implying?   _You and Tracy?_

The other side of the conversation fell silent for a moment, then: _Got to go, early day with the folks tomorrow. Do me a favor and delete these texts; Sam won’t like that we were texting about him._

            Dean snickered. _You don’t know the half of it, buddy._ Out of courtesy, he deleted the texts. He couldn’t get the words out of his brain, though, even through the night.

            The next morning Sam woke up looking marginally less corpse-like, which Dean decided to count as a win. “There anyplace we can go for breakfast around here?” he asked Sam.

            “Someplace where they won’t shoot you on sight?” Sam wrinkled his nose. “We’d have to go pretty far afield; do you want to take that much time away from the job?”

            “Shut up.” Dean rolled his eyes. “Get dressed; we can go and see what we can rustle up, okay?”

            All through the search for breakfast, and then through breakfast, he thought about what Brady had accidentally disclosed. Sam kept trying to talk about the copycat, and about the spell that Lange had set up, but Dean couldn’t concentrate. Finally he just blurted it out. “Sammy, are you seeing a dude?”

            Sam didn’t miss a beat. “Wow, Dean, way to nail those sensitivity points. Did you take a class or something? Anyway, the spell seems to be pretty complex. I’m not entirely sure how to break it, but I called someone who knows a little bit about this kind of thing and it seems like it’s almost like… I guess the unfinished spell calls out to people with a certain mindset. The spell itself wants to be completed. So these people, who would already have been killers anyway, are drawn to make a sacrifice in the right place. It seems like the conditions maybe aren’t right? That’s what my source says, anyway.”

            “Is your source your boyfriend, Sammy?” Dean drank from his coffee cup and stole the bacon Sam wasn’t eating anyway.

            “My source is in her nineties, Dean. She’s uncomfortable talking about this stuff with anyone named Winchester, but – oh my God would you please chew with your mouth closed, no one wants to see that. Anyway, no, my source is no one’s boyfriend.” Sam shuddered away from the purposefully gross display Dean was making of his food.

            “So who is your boyfriend, Sammy?”

            Sam put his coffee down and met Dean’s eyes. “Dean. I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t have a girlfriend. Are you asking me because you care so deeply about my emotional connections and support system or are you asking me because you’ve gotten nosy and suspicious about my sexuality?”

            Dean gave his brother a smarmy grin. “I’ll take door number two for a thousand, Alex.” Sammy was getting upset; he always got very precise and over-intellectual when he was upset with Dean, like he was trying to stop himself from exploding.

            Of course, it was his job as big brother to push, and besides. He had to know.

            Sam took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m bisexual. Probably bisexual. I like more than one gender, at least. I haven’t explored more than that. No, I’m not actually dating anyone, because no one in their right mind would date a Winchester at all never mind me specifically. Are we done? Can we go back to the case now?”

            Dean looked into Sam’s eyes and saw raw hurt, giving way to coldness. “Damn it, Sammy.” It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Sammy had been coddled and protected all his life so that he wouldn’t be hurt, so that Dean would never see his loving and affectionate brother giving way to coldness like this.

            If he’d stayed with his family, this would never have happened. Sure, he’d have been lonely in that way, but he’d never have had to realize that he was just always going to be alone. He’d never have realized that there was anything else out there, and he’d have been so much happier that way.

            “The case, Dean. Copycat killers? Spells?” Sam gestured toward his laptop.

            “Right.” Dean cleared his throat, all of the teasing gone out of him. Maybe they hadn’t done the kid any favors, at that. “What do you want to do about it?”

            “I’m not sure what we can do about it.” Sam slumped back against his seat. “We need to figure out what it was that Lange was trying to summon, I think. And there’s no real good way to do that.”

            Dean sniffed. “Can’t you just, I don’t know, ask him or something? He’s your BFF now, right?”

            Sam rolled his eyes. “Well for starters, no. He’s on administrative segregation since he decided to set his mattress on fire when he decided to ask for a prosecutorial intern that he should never have heard of. That would be me, not that it would be any less creepy if it were someone else who had gotten the internship.” He rubbed at his temples. “But yeah, it turns out when you use pyrokinesis in jail, they lock your ass in solitary for a while.”

            “Good to know.” Dean grimaced. “The pyro thing is new, huh?”

            “He’s never shown signs of pyrokinesis before.” Sam stirred his oatmeal once and let his spoon fall with a listless plop.

            Dean sighed. “Come on, Sammy. Let’s take the day to regroup and look at it with fresh eyes a little later on.”

           


	5. What Child Is This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam makes a frenemy. John and Tara ask some questions in a very polite and not at all violent fashion. Dean clears some air.

Sam

 

            Sam tried to relax through the “regroup” day with Dean, but there was no practical way to make that happen. They drove up into San Francisco to… do something, it had been Dean’s idea and Sam had been too busy fretting to pay much attention to Dean’s explanation. Assuming that Dean had offered an explanation, which wasn’t exactly guaranteed all things considered.

            One more way he’d disappointed Dean.

            Fuck.

            He stared out the window and chewed on his nails. On the one hand, Dean hadn’t thrown things at him and stormed off. Not that Sam had really expected homophobia, not exactly. He’d known that Dean knew some guys who weren’t exactly straight when Sam was growing up. Sam hadn’t dared to ask for details, not with their father around and because it wasn’t his business, but intellectually at least he’d known that Dean didn’t have a problem with people who weren’t straight.

            Of course, it was a whole different ball game when those “people” became “little brother,” and that little brother was already the world’s biggest disappointment and screw-up.

            On the other hand, Sam had already walked away from Dad and from hunting. He couldn’t exactly screw up bigger than that. It didn’t matter who Sam slept with.

            The drive to San Francisco took an hour. It should only have taken about forty-five minutes, but traffic was bad for a Saturday. “What the hell is with all of these people, Sammy?” Dean asked, thumping the steering wheel.

            Sam couldn’t help but grin at that. “There aren’t many shopping days left before Christmas, Dean.”

            “Oh.” He blinked. “Shit. I completely forgot.”

            “Not like Christmas was ever really our thing.” Sam shrugged. “Honestly, I’m kind of glad that school lets out so early.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “The whole dorm already knows I’m a freak. Trying to explain away one more weird thing, like why I don’t celebrate Christmas, would just be icing on the cake.”

            “What, you don’t want to explain that your heart is three sizes too small? Tell ‘em you’re Jewish.”

            “Pretty sure they all know I’m not.” He blushed. Dean opened his mouth and Sam definitely didn’t want to go there, not with Dean, so he hastily added, “They all saw that my next of kin was a Catholic priest, dude. Plus, when I got dragged to the hospital after the stupid owl-men, they brought in a priest to give me last rites.”

            Dean snorted, but he wouldn’t look at Sam. “Seriously?”

            “Yeah. According to Brady, backed up by my advisor, I recovered consciousness to correct the guy on his Latin.” Sam blushed again and turned his face back to the window. “Evidently I’m kind of a dick when I’m delirious.”

            “Most people are, Sammy.” He swallowed. “I talked a little bit with Brady last night. He texted you.”

            Rage welled up inside of Sam, but he tamped it down. “Brady the one who outed me?”

            “Not on purpose. I figured it out for myself. It is kind of my job, in a way. Figuring things out.” Dean cleared his throat. “You know it doesn’t bother me, Sammy.”

            “I know.” Sam forced a little grin.

            “I mean I’m gonna make fun of you like no one’s business, because I’m your big brother, but I’d do that no matter what.”

            “Oh I know.” Sam rolled his eyes.

            “I don’t think it’s a great idea to tell Dad.”

            Sam could have choked on his on tongue, but he tried to hold his reaction in. “I appreciate that. I don’t think he’d be all that enthusiastic about the details.”

            “Eventually, maybe, but right now he’s still a little raw.” Dean shifted in his seat.

            Why wouldn’t Dad be “a little raw” about it? He was disappointed in everything else about Sam. “Yeah. Okay.” He didn’t want to push it, didn’t want to start a fight with Dean.

            “So you want me to drop you off in the Castro or what?”

            Sam fought down a laugh and flipped his brother off.

            The brothers rarely had the chance to do much sightseeing when they were growing up. They got to travel the country, sure, but they were in (place x) to do a job, not to get their jollies looking at (tourist attraction y.) If it wasn’t haunted or cursed, they didn’t get to see it. Sam had gotten to explore San Francisco once or twice with his friends since getting to Stanford, but he hadn’t had a chance to poke around all that much. They wandered the touristy areas like kids in a candy store, visiting the Barbary Coast and the Penny Arcade with glee. Sam managed to forget some of his anxiety as he wallowed in Dean’s almost child-like joy as he explored the waterfront.

            Dean had always been able to do that, glean whatever joy was to be had out of the moment he was in and be content with it. Sam had always envied that about Dean. He’d never had that ability to just be present in the moment. His whole life had been secrets: secrets about him, secrets kept from him, secrets he was keeping. Secrets he was keeping about having broken the secrets other people were keeping about him. Trying to keep track of all of the different threads, all of the different covers and lies, meant that he wasn’t ever able to fully let go and enjoy the _now_.

            Dean, though. Sure, the case still loomed over them. Sure, Dad was going to lose his shit when Dean caught up to him again. Sure, there was going to be hell to pay later. Right now, there was a pretty girl in the Penny Arcade, and Dean was more than happy to lose himself in a pair of bright blue eyes.

            Sam took advantage of the opportunity to slip out and buy the single ugliest Christmas sweater he could find in the immediate area. He wrapped it around a couple of skin mags; he didn’t pay attention to the titles. He knew his brother preferred _Busty Asian Beauties,_ but Dean already had a subscription and Sam didn’t think he was exactly comfortable with that degree of fetishism anyway.

            Dean texted him a little later to find out where he’d gone. He had collected Miss Penny’s phone number so they could meet up later, which was fine by Sam, as long as they went somewhere else.

            After a while they stopped to grab dinner and then drove back to Stanford. Sam didn’t mind that they didn’t go out carousing again; he truly wasn’t feeling up to it and he wanted to get an early start on the case the next day. Dean just winked and took Sam’s access card. “Don’t worry, Sammy. I’ll take Miss Penny somewhere nice.”

            Sam hid his brother’s Christmas presents in the same place he hid other things he didn’t want hunters to find, the hollowed out place in the bottom of the closet. Then, he called Brady.

            “Dude, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to let anything slip to your brother –“

            “It’s okay, Brady,” Sam said, giving his friend a little smile that he knew he couldn’t see. “He’s cool with it.”

            Brady paused. “Really?”

            “Me being bi is about the only thing about my life he’s cool with, but yeah. He so doesn’t care.” Sam gave a bitter little chuckle. “So how are things with your family?”

            “They’re okay, actually. As okay as they were going to be, anyway. My brother is a Rhodes scholar, apparently. Didn’t decide to tell me that at Thanksgiving, but you know. Who’s bitter about that?”

            Sam grimaced. “I’m sorry, man. That’s a lot to live up to.”

            “Right?” Brady took a deep, wet-sounding breath and then let it out slowly. “But you know what? I’m not Rutherford. I don’t have to be Rutherford. I _can’t_ be him, you know? I’m at one of the best universities in the world, I’m in a prestigious program, and I’m doing well.”

            “You’re doing awesome,” Sam added quickly. “You’ve got a whole floor of people who care about you, friends who would do anything for you. You’re under a lot of pressure but you’ve got a lot of support to help you meet it, right?”

            “Right.” Brady sounded better already. “You’re the best, Sam. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

            _Probably a lot better than you’re doing with me._ “So what’ve you been doing this break besides getting the ‘why can’t you be more like him’ speech from your folks?”

            “Ah, you know. The usual. My dad wants me to go golfing tomorrow. How’s the internship?”

            “It’s intense. Intense but awesome,” Sam said, leaning back and pulling the covers up to his chest. “It’s a fantastic opportunity. I mean, I’m not even in law school yet and I already get to interview some of the most famous murderers of our time!”

            “Sounds, uh, grim. But you’re into that, so I’m really happy for you.” Brady winced as someone shrill called out to him in the background. “Got to go. My mom has a bunch of people over and you know how that goes.”

            Sam did not know how that went. Even if he extrapolated how his father behaved around hunting colleagues and buddies, John had preferred that Sam remain neither seen nor heard. He certainly never wanted Sam to put in an appearance and socialize. Sam had always embarrassed his father. Still, he put on a brave face and told his friend good night, plugging his phone in to charge and settling in for the night.

            He was stupid for thinking he could have more than friends with benefits with Brady. They came from such different worlds, different universes really, that it could never have really worked out. Even if Sam had been good, or clean, even if Sam had been someone who could be loved, it would never have been possible between him and Brady.

            He tossed and turned until he found a comfortable position, finally catching unconsciousness after about half an hour of searching. Even that was a testament to his own exhaustion. Once he fell asleep, he dreamed.

            His dreams took him back to the Couch residence. In the waking world the place wasn’t much different from other abandoned buildings the Winchesters borrowed from time to time. It had an aura of menace to it, sure, but almost anyplace with a similar history would. The smell had been bad, but not as bad as the old meatpacking plant John had stashed them in for a few nights that one time.

            In his dreams, the house reeked. How anyone could stand to live near it when it stank this bad completely mystified Sam. There was the sulfur, a kind of primer layer of scent that gave a backdrop for everything else. There was the swampy, sweaty, marshy smell that sat on top of the sulfur, a foulness that completely clashed with the icy chill that pervaded the scene.

            Then there was the rot. The stench of rotting meat wound its way around everything else, not quite overpowering the other aromas but definitely demanding the lion’s share of attention. Sam gagged, doubling over. The only thing that kept him from throwing up was his own desire not to add to the stink in here.

            “The smell not your cup of tea?”

            Sam looked up. The voice came from a woman, or something that sounded feminine anyway. She stood in the spot where the latest victim had been slaughtered, and where every member of the Couch family had been slain. Sam stared at her, although the sight made his eyes water.

            It was like looking at an image superimposed over another image, with another image layered atop that one. The main impression was that of a little girl, between six and eight years old. The child had long blond hair in two braids on either side of her head, and big blue eyes. Over that layer was a tall, stunning blonde woman in a slinky white satin dress that might be better described as lingerie. Underneath them both was a creature right out of nightmare, with a stretched out, gray face, twisted horns and a mouth full of rotting, razor-sharp teeth.

            The tri-form monster sneered and walked toward him. “Relax,” she said. “The side of you that doesn’t like it will burn away eventually. At worst you’ll accept it and just get used to it, but I have a feeling, Sammy, that you’re going to come to love it. It’s in your blood, after all.”

            If his blood smelled like this, no wonder his body rejected transfusions. It probably rejected anything pure and good. “What are you? Who are you?”

            She snorted and reached out to put a hand on his face. Her skin was burning hot to the touch, but he didn’t flinch away. “What am I? I’m pretty sure you already know the answer to that one, kid.” She blinked, and her eyes in all three forms turned a milky white. “As for _who_ I am, well. I can’t tell you that; it would spoil all the fun later on.” Her hand trailed down to his chest. “I must say, he did his work well. You did turn out pretty, for whatever that’s worth.”

            Sam would not lose it. He would not lose it in here, not in front of this demonic woman, even if she was only a figment of his imagination. “Can you maybe stop doing that?”

            “Why? We can have a rollicking good time together right now, Sammy. We don’t have to fight yet. Eventually. But for now we can use each other.” Her sneer turned into a full-blown leer. “Unless you think too highly of yourself for that sort of thing.”

            Sam swallowed down another wave of nausea. “Must be something I ate,” he lied. He must be losing it if he was trying to spare the feelings of a demonic figment of his fucked-up imagination, but what the hell. “Why are you here?”

            “Because some damn fool left an open channel to the deepest pit of Hell in a Mansion in the San Francisco suburbs.” He must have looked surprised, because she laughed at him and gave him a little shove. “Idiot. What did you think was going on over there? Your little friend Lange was trying talk to someone _all_ the way downstairs. He almost got the chance, too.”

            Sam pulled away. “What do you mean?”

            “I mean that there were only two problems with his plan. The land was right – the house was built in a place that was once sacred ground. Lange killed those people on what used to be the altar. He just needed to kill virgins, and more of them, in order to talk to the person he wanted to hear from. Two of the Lange kids qualified, but that wasn’t nearly enough.” She laughed. The little girl’s voice sounded like bells, and the adult woman’s laugh sounded like a seductress trying to work her way into his pants, and the other form sounded like a trillion screaming souls.

            “So all of these other killings…” Sam gulped.

            “Useless but fun.” She closed her eyes and for a moment Sam thought she might orgasm. “Every one of them brought a minor demon from downstairs up into the world of the living, but they weren’t necessary to communicate with Hell. If someone wanted to talk with someone very powerful, sure, but again, they’d have needed a major sacrifice for that.”

            “So Lange got it wrong,” Sam mused, forgetting his own revulsion for a moment in his excitement about the case. “He was trying to reach out to a very powerful demon, but he didn’t have the ritual right.”

            The demon gave a low, throaty chuckle. “Oh, Sammy, where’s that brilliant mind I keep hearing so much about? You know demons aren’t the only ones in Hell, after all.”

            Sam frowned. He had an idea of who she might be talking about, but the mind shuddered away from his name. “And Lange just didn’t have the ritual right?”

            “No. He didn’t. He had most of it, but the ritual is demonic and Lange was just a man. A normal, human man with no abilities beyond what any normal, human man is born with.” She reached up and stroked Sam’s hair.

            “He’s pyrokinetic,” Sam pointed out, ignoring the touching in the hopes that it would stop.

            “That came after. It was a reward. He impressed the Master with his devotion. Someone else had already reached Lucifer, you see. Gotten instructions.” She laughed and pulled Sam down, smashing her lips onto his.

            He struggled to get away, but she was much stronger than he was. “It’s going to be a fun few years, kid. I’ll see you around.”

            Sam jackknifed up in bed just as Dean slunk in the door, grabbed his trash can and emptied his guts into it.

            Dean dropped everything and came to sit beside him, patting his back until he’d finished dry heaving. “It’s been a long time since you’ve had a nightmare that bad,” he said in a quiet voice.

            _Not as long as you think,_ Sam thought back, but didn’t say. Instead, he groped around for a bottle of water and went to rinse his mouth out and empty the bin.

            When he came back, Dean had changed and was sitting in his borrowed bed. “You want to talk about it?”

            Sam shrugged. He’d dreamed about nightmare creatures like demons for years; he couldn’t tell Dean that, because that would absolutely have Dad in his face and not in the “loving and caring parent” kind of way, but he didn’t take it seriously. “I think I might have figured out what we were missing, with the case.”

John

 

            John sat across from Andrew, or the thing that had possessed Andrew. The waitress, giving them both the stinkeye, left them a pitcher of beer and two glasses. This kid couldn’t be more than twenty-three, John thought to himself. He was no older than Dean, and here he was, a tool for a monster. He must have done something, John knew. He must have done something to let it in, to make himself available or attractive to the demon. “What name should I use for you?”

            The monster shrugged. “Andrew will do. It might get a few tongues wagging, if you start calling me by other names while I’m talking to you in Andrew’s hometown, Johnny.”

            John clenched his jaw. Even his father hadn’t called him Johnny. He let hunters get away with calling him Johnny when they were pissed at him, because he might need them again someday and couldn’t get away with shooting them. But this _thing_ , this body-snatcher, thought it had the right to sit there and call him some sneering smarmy nickname – it was too much.

            Then again, the body-snatcher had information that John needed. He’d have to let it live, for now. “So, ‘Andrew,’ what exactly do you think are our common goals here?”

            Andrew laughed. John wanted to bathe in bleach. “That’s what I like about you, John. You don’t beat around the bush. You cut right to the point. You don’t waste time with little things like social conventions or small talk. You’re on the trail of something old records call the Jawbone Devil. As it happens, I’m also trying to track down this fellow. It just so happens that I know exactly who he is.”

            “Who cares who he is?” John took a sip of his beer. It was flat and stale.

            “You do, John. If you want to get at that knife he’s carrying.” The creature smiled, insincere and sharp. “Sit back and listen a spell, won’t you? I know it’s hard for you, but try. It’ll be worth your while.”

            John bristled at the dig about his listening skills, but kept his hands on his beer and kept his mouth shut.

            When Andrew saw that John was going to behave, he nodded and spoke again. “This part is kind of a legend. We tell it in demonic Sunday school. Don’t worry, Johnny, you’ll find out all about that eventually.” He gave another wolfish grin, and John definitely didn’t feel at all comfortable with his implications there, but he kept his mouth shut. “It’s written. When Lucifer, our Lord, was cast down, many angels Fell with him, and those angels became demons. From them, we get our language, our variant on Enochian. Then God made humans, man and woman.”

            “Adam and Eve.” John rolled his eyes. “Humans have Sunday school too, you know.”

            “Should have stuck with it a little longer, there, Johnny. Eve wasn’t the first woman. The first woman God created as a wife for Adam was Lilith, only she and Adam weren’t exactly well suited. Adam wanted a submissive wife and that sure as hell wasn’t Lilith. He cast her out, even as Michael cast Lucifer out, and Lucifer found her. He twisted her soul and made her into the first true demon – the mother of our race, the first to be made from a corrupt human soul.”

            John raised an eyebrow at that. Did Andrew not see the inherent contradiction in his story? Even in the first paragraph he got confused between who cast Lucifer down, God or Michael.

            “Anyway, Adam married Eve, she did the sex things the way Adam wanted, Adam was probably pretty bad at it all things considered – I mean really, the guy can’t take a little direction? Can’t take a hint like, ‘This isn’t working for me, let’s try that instead?’ But anyhoo. They have sons. Cain and Abel.”

            John rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows this story. Mice know this story.”

            “It’s an important story. Some things get left out of the story, of course. Did you know, for example, that both Cain and Abel left progeny?” Andrew huffed out a little laugh. “Yeah, they like to portray Abel as this innocent little kid, but he was a grown man with at least one kid of his own. Modern people wanted him to look more pathetic, to demonize Cain more. Ha ha! Did you see what I did there? Come on, Johnny, it’s a little funny.

            “At any rate, Abel screws up and Cain goes to off him, right? And then he gets the Mark of Cain.”

            “From God, yeah yeah, I know the drill. Do you have a point?” John gulped at the stale beer.

            Andrew leaned in closer. “The thing is, Johnny, Cain didn’t get squat from God. God wasn’t interested in what was going on. That mark came from Lucifer. And with that Mark came a whole lot of power. Enough power, it’s said, to kill any demon. Enough power, with the same knife that slew Abel, to take on an Archangel.”

            John shook his head. This was why he’d never put a lot of stock in the whole “demon” thing. Once you bought into that you had to buy into the whole heaven and hell thing and then you might as well sit in a circle singing “Kumbaya” and holding candles to keep the evils of the world at bay. “Cute story. Except the part where there’s no such thing as friggin’ angels.”

            Andrew’s eyes flashed black, and he drained his glass in one gulp. “Maybe there aren’t anymore. No one’s seen any in at least two thousand years. Me, I’m okay with that. Feathery stuck-ups think they’re superior, but when’s the last time they stepped in to help any of the billons of people who call out to them for help, huh?” He waggled his eyebrows up and down. “Now demons? You ask us for help, you cut a deal with us, we always deliver.” He put his glass down with a satisfying thump. “We have to. It’s practically built in.”

            John snickered. “So a deal with a devil is legally binding?”

            “For us. Not necessarily for you, although I wouldn’t recommend trying to weasel my way out of one. Word to the wise? Hellhounds kind of suck.” He rubbed at his neck.

            “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” John sipped at his beer. “So this Cain guy…”

            “Becomes the first Knight of Hell,” Andrew supplied. “Like a demon, like a super-demon, but more. More hate, more rage, living only for chaos and destruction. There are some demons who are pretty good at the whole organization and rule thing. Then there are some – like the Knights of Hell – that are literally just forces of destruction for its own sake.”

            John’s insides felt cold. Even though this thing was probably full of crap, it sounded like something that was out of his league. Out of any hunter’s league. “If these Knights of Hell are so dangerous and so unhinged,” he asked, “why is it that I’m just hearing about them now? I’ve been doing this for close to twenty years now and I haven’t even heard any verifiable evidence of demons, never mind a Knight of Hell.”

            Andrew gave him a smarmy grin. “Oh, that’s easy. They’re all gone.”

            “Really.”

            “Sure. Cain had disappeared for a while during the nineteenth century. He resurfaced during the War of Northern Aggression.” John gave the demon a hard look for the name, but Andrew ignored him. “Abaddon led the rest of them against him, but he managed to slaughter all of them except for her. She survived until sometime around the late nineteen fifties, when she just up and disappeared. No one’s seen hide nor hair of Cain since the war.”

            “And all of this has what to do with me?” John glared at Andrew.

            “Well Johnny,” Andrew said, leering at him. “You’re the one who’s picked up his trail. You’re the one who figured out he’s still in Missouri. We’re going to follow you until you find him, and you help us bring him home.”

            John crossed his arms over his chest. “Uh-huh. You don’t see anything about that statement as being a little bit far-fetched?”

            Andrew blinked, letting his eyes return to their natural bloodshot hue. “No.”

            “Assuming that I believe you – and that’s an awfully big assumption, all things considered – you’re banking on the idea that a hunter who has dedicated his life and his sons’ lives to fighting evil is going to return a massive weapon to the arsenal of the bosom of all evil.” He leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. “You don’t think there’s anything a little… screwy… about that?”

            Andrew sighed and leaned right up to meet him. “John, I think you’d sell your own mother to the King of Hell himself if it gave you a shot at finding what killed Blondie. Never mind if you have a true chance at hurting it or whatever – as long as you can find it and pretend like you’ve got a snowball’s chance at getting closer to taking it out, you’ll do anything. There’s no line you won’t cross, no one you won’t harm. You know it, I know it, so how about if we cut the bullshit and come to an agreement?”

            John pulled back. He had lines. He did. He’d never hurt his boys. Everything he’d ever done had always been about keeping them safe, for Christ’s sake.

            Except that wasn’t really true, was it? He’d put them in harm’s way countless times, always with the assumption that he’d be able to pull them to safety before any permanent damage could be done. And he had, although there had been plenty of close calls.

            They didn’t mind, though. Dean didn’t mind, anyway. He got it, why they did this. He got that Mary came first. And if they got killed pursuing justice, well, Mary would be waiting for them in Heaven. At least they’d have tried, done their best and saved a lot of people on their way out.

            Dean would completely understand why he was here, now, talking to a monster that called itself a demon. “I get the knife,” he said, surprised by the sound of his own voice.

            Did he have the right to do this? Whatever the monster said, whatever he was offering, there was no guarantee he could deliver. If this Cain guy was everything that Andrew said he was, then he was one of the most powerful creatures on the planet. They weren’t going to be able to bash him on the head and just drag him back to Hell by his feet, hopefully slipping the knife from his grasp like thieves.

            And the demon or whatever it was was possessing Andrew. Did he have the right to work with the monster that had stolen this kid’s body and run around with it for a year at least? The kid might have invited it through some kind of lifestyle choice or behavior or something, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be ridden like this.

            John shook his head, clearing it. Mary would understand. Once he’d gotten revenge for Mary, he could swing back through and save Andrew. Do some research, maybe, and figure out what this thing was and how to exorcise it.

            “Alright,” Andrew agreed with a shrug. “Cain’s more dangerous to us with the stupid knife, so it’s better for us if you take it anyway.”

            “Let’s go back to the motel and pick up Tara. We’ll need her help anyway; she’s done half the research here.”

            Andrew got into the truck and rode back to the motel with John. “I wonder that you didn’t bring Dean on this little adventure,” the demon commented, looking idly out the window. “I’d have thought you’d want backup you could trust on something like this.”

            “Leave Dean out of this,” John growled.

            “Dean’s knee-deep in his own mess out in Cali, you know. That case he’s working on? Bay Area is just swimming in sulfur right now. I guess it’s good for the sinuses, but he’s not exactly trained on how to handle demons, is he? I mean, how could he be? You’ve been pretty much the only one training him and you still don’t believe in us, even though you’re sitting next to one.”

            John gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “Dean’ll be fine.”

            “Oh, right. He’s working with Sammy.” The demon relaxed a little. “We’ve got great hopes for that one. Who wouldn’t, you know?”

            John’s vision narrowed to a tunnel. He fought to keep his breathing even and normal. He wanted to lash out, to punch, to scream until the sulfurous little fucker in the seat next to him explained exactly what he’d meant by that in as great detail as possible under the confines of the English language.

            Except Andrew had already shown that he knew how to teleport. He wouldn’t just sit there for that, he’d leave, and then John would be left with no weapon _and_ no answers. Instead, he kept driving.

            When they got to the motel, John led the way to the door. He noticed that Tara wasn’t in her truck, which meant that she’d already woken up somehow. That was probably good. Unless she’d ben kidnapped, possibly by other demons. John scanned the area as he reached out to put the key into the lock and noticed that the salt line had disappeared from the doorway.

            _Oh, shit._

            He pushed open the door anyway, only to find Tara, sprawled out in the chair and glaring. “I don’t appreciate being ditched like that,” she told them. “It ain’t polite.”

            John held up his hands. “Sorry. I didn’t exactly have a lot of say in the matter, you know?”

            Andrew walked further into the room and took a seat at the rickety table. “How about we let bygones be bygones, Tara?” He offered her a smarmy grin. “John and I have come to a decision, and we think it’s best for all of us to work together on this for now.”

            Tara stood up and stalked over to the demon. “Have you now?” She picked up a plastic cup and splashed some of the contents into Andrew’s face. Open, oozing sores appeared, smoking and bleeding. Andrew screamed, eyes flashing black. “Did you decide on that too, you demonic dick?”

            “’I’m going to drag you into Hell with me!” Andrew vowed. He tensed, as though to lunge forward, and John brought his gun online more out of instinct than because it would do any good.

            “Devil’s trap under the chair, Hell-breath,” Tara said, a smug little smirk crossing her face. “Buckle up, buttercup, you’re not going anywhere until we get some answers.”

            Andrew snarled at her and then turned to John. “You going to let your bitch get away with this, John-boy?”

            John put his gun away. He’d have preferred that Tara not do this, but since she had, he might as well take advantage. “This knife. What’s it called?”

            “The First Blade. On account of the fact that it’s the first murder weapon. Maybe I’ll use a facsimile to skin you alive, you useless twat!” Andrew spat at Tara.

            Tara dipped her fingers into the cup of holy water and flicked a few drops at the demon. “Language,” she tutted.

            “And the crack about Sammy? Your ‘high hopes’ for him?” John put his hands on his hips. No one could see them sweat that way.

            “You don’t think I’m really going to spill the beans on that one for a little bit of holy water, do you?” Andrew smirked. “Come on. That’s some seriously high-level stuff.”

            John grabbed his own flask and let a little bit of the sacred liquid trickle into the demon’s ear.

            Andrew howled in anguish. “I don’t know the details, okay? I just know that the bosses have something special planned for him. They’ve been watching you for a really long time, Johnny.” His face turned from one of panicked anguish to a sneer of contempt. “You thought that by keeping them isolated and on the run you were keeping them safe from us, but no. You were just making sure that both of those boys would never be able to function in human society. You turned them into freaks, and now you’ll never be able to give your precious little Mary grandchildren or anything like that.

            “How does that feel, Johnny? You turned them into freaks, incompetent to live in the outside world, and it was all for nothing. We’ve been watching you every minute, of every day, ever since the day little Sammy was conceived. Not even the day he was born. That kid was created for greatness, and you seriously thought that you could stop it.” He howled with laughter, even as John poured holy water into his mouth.

            “What exactly does he have planned for the boy?”

            “Ah, Johnny.” Andrew shook his head, pink foam at the edges of his mouth from the holy water treatment. “I’m not anywhere near high enough on the food chain to know about that. But what I do know is that it’s going to be big, and if I were you I’d stay on his good side. Because when everything shakes out? It’s going to pay to have him at your back.”

            John snarled and punched the demon. He couldn’t help himself. “Tell me what’s happening!” he demanded. “Tell me who’s doing this!”

            “This was all planned out years ago. Decades, Johnny. We’ve all got our part to play. Even you, Johnny. But you keep that righteous anger burning. You keep pushing your boy away. It’s only going to help us in the end.”

            Tara held out her phone. John jumped as he heard Pastor Jim’s voice crackle through the speaker, droning out a long piece of Latin gibberish. It meant nothing to him, but it clearly meant a lot to Andrew.

            Andrew struggled against the invisible bonds that held him to the chair. As Jim continued to recite, smoke started to pour out of the young man’s mouth. John could only watch in horror as Andrew brought forth a long stream of thick black smoke, far too much to fit into a human body.

            The smoke was pulled downward, into a fiery looking circle that appeared in the floor. The stink of sulfur disappeared from the room. Andrew fell out of his chair, eyes fixed and glassy, bleeding from the mouth, ears and nose.

 

Dean

 

            Dean helped his brother get cleaned up and back into bed. “What do you mean, you think you’ve figured out what we’ve been missing from the case?” His night out with Miss Penny had been fun. Maybe Sammy hadn’t been the only one who needed a night off, a little time just to relax and have some fun. It had been entirely too long since Dean had been able to do that, not that it was easy to do the way that they lived. Not that he was complaining; the work they did was important, but he’d been running himself pretty ragged lately and it wasn’t like he’d had a lot of privacy.

            Except when he didn’t want it. But that was a different matter altogether.

            Right now, though, he needed to put that aside. He was used to Sam’s nightmares. They’d been a fact of life ever since he’d been an infant, the first sign that he’d been processing anything inside that big freakish brain of his. They didn’t mean anything, of course. They were just his weirdo brain’s way of processing information. The kid had grown up entirely within the hunting life, never really knowing the softer side of life and with a steady diet of gore and monstrosities right alongside his Cheerios. Anyone would have nightmares. It was practically normal, for crying out loud.

            It had been a long time since one of Sam’s nightmares had made him hurl, though.

            Of course, some creepy-ass serial killer had been asking for him by name. Dean would probably barf too.

            It wouldn’t do any good to dwell on it, or to ask about it, or anything like that. Sam wouldn’t tell him anything, thought he was getting away with something when he avoided the questions, and Dean didn’t want a repeat performance of the Great Upchuck Incident of 2002. “Sam? The case?”

            Sam took a deep, shuddering breath. “Right. Sorry. The, uh, case. I think I’ve figured out what the spell was supposed to be for.”

            Dean flicked Sam’s ear with his fingernail. “And that would be, genius?”

            Sam swallowed. “It was a communications spell. Like… like a transatlantic phone cable. Only…”

            “Stop trying to build suspense, asshole. It’s not working, you’re just pissing me off.”

            “To Hell. Lange was trying to communicate with some kind of demon, deep in the darkest part of Hell.” Sam’s eyes were wild now, beyond terror.

            Dean frowned. “Why would he want to do a damn fool thing like that? And what does that have to do with the murders?”

            Sam took a deep breath and leaned back in his bead before he answered. “He was – is – an ardent supporter of the one he was trying to speak with. It doesn’t matter right now. The thing is, he failed in his spell for the most part, because he didn’t know what needed to be done. But the spell – it’s still active.”

            “So it’s basically a red phone for Satan.”

            Sam gave a full body shudder and Dean wanted nothing more than to reach out and somehow make it all okay. Whatever the nightmare had been, it must have been a doozy to have Sammy this fucked up. “In essence. Only they can’t reach him, so they’re getting other demons. And the murders, well, they’re completing rituals that let the killers summon a minor demon.”

            Dean’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be joking.”

            Sam rubbed at his face and scratched at his arm, miserable and forlorn. “I wish I was.”

            Dean took Sam’s hand and stopped him from scratching before he could make himself bleed. This, too, was old news, something he’d done after the worse nightmares ever since he’d been a kid. “Okay. How do we break the spell?”

            Sam glared. Brady had said to distract Sam. While Dean didn’t think he could offer the same kind of distraction he suspected Brady could give, the bitchface told him that he did okay. “Dean, I’m not a witch, okay? I’m a college student. Pre-law. What I don’t know about witchcraft could fill a fucking library.”

            “Calm down there, Cujo. It was just a question.” Dean smothered a grin as he patted his brother on the shoulder. “These guys – were they looking to summon demons?”

            “No.” Sam shook his head. “They were looking to kill someone, and they were looking for the same sense of peace that Lange got when he made brief contact with – what he spoke with.” Sam pulled the blanket up and closer to himself, like it ever got chilly in a college dorm room. “They were all responsible for their own actions, it wasn’t the Hell Hotline that did it.”       

            Dean breathed a sigh of relief. Possession would be terrible enough. How much worse would it be to come out of possession and find that the had murdered someone and you were doing time for it, maybe even were on Death Row for it? He didn’t know how it worked for demonic possession. He barely accepted demonic possession. He got ghostly possession, though. “Okay. So what, then? The house is the tether.”

            “Not a tether, exactly,” Sam frowned, “but I get what you mean.” He chewed on his lip. “I can’t think of any way to fix this, to stop the killings, that doesn’t involve destroying the house.”

            “Seems like an easy choice to me, Sammy.” Dean stood up. “I’ll get right on that.”

            Sam all but tackled him. “Dean! No!”

            Dean spun around. Sometimes he didn’t get little brothers. “Sam, what? The house needs to go away, I’m really damn good at torching houses, where is the problem here?”

            Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “The problem, Dean, is that you have already been caught sneaking around the site once in the past week. A site which, in case you forgot the heavily armed cops who were on the scene and who hauled your skinny butt to jail, is still a very active crime scene.”

            Dean paused. “I don’t have a skinny butt.”

            “You have no butt at all. Now look, you’re not going to do anyone any good at all if you get set up for arson, do you understand me? I can’t get you off for that. I’m a very lowly undergrad intern. I have _no pull_. I’d want to, don’t get me wrong, but it’s like wanting to go see the Doors live and in concert. Not possible. You can’t help future victims from jail, and you can’t help Dad from jail, so how about if we come up with a solution that doesn’t involve you, handcuffs and a bright orange jumpsuit?” Sam had gotten to his feet and was leaning into Dean’s space now, pupils the size of some purely theoretical particles, and Dean had to grab onto his shoulders and ease him back onto the bed. “You don’t even look good in orange!”

            Dean looked awesome in orange. Sam needed to get his eyes checked. “Easy, tiger,” he said, trying to sound as soothing and conciliatory as he could. “Let’s see what we can come up with, okay? I’m willing to take whatever risks I have to if it means it might work, Sammy –“

            “It won’t, Dean. It won’t, because they’re looking for that kind of thing. Besides, torching the place right now means that a killer will probably walk.” Sam started scratching at his arm again.

            Dean frowned and moved Sam’s hand away from his arm. “What we need to do is try to go back to sleep, Sammy. We can try to come up with a solution in the morning.”

            Sam looked at Dean and for a split second, Dean thought his brother might not recognize him right now. Then he shook it off. Sammy knew him; of course Sammy knew him. Sammy was just wound up a little too tightly right now, like always. Sammy needed to chill.

            Dean talked Sammy back into lying down and turned out the lights, although sleep took a while in coming. Was this the reason that Sammy had ditched hunting? He knew that Sammy had a hard time with what they did, that every time they took a risk it left Sammy demanding that Dean wrap himself up in bubble wrap and dumb shit like that. He’d never been very good with Dean being in danger. His own skin, Dean recalled, had never been of much interest to him, but he’d light into their dad for days about the slightest bruise or bump on Dean.

            Of course, this went deeper. Whatever had Sammy so spooked had to have come from the dream, which meant that he’d dug something up during his research that had him freaked right the hell out.

            There wasn’t much Dean could do about that. All that he could do was the job that was in front of him. That, and maybe get Sammy laid while he was here. Christ, the kid could use it.

            The next day, Dean woke up and found Sam’s nose in a black, leather-bound book. “Come on, Sammy. Let’s get breakfast. You still look like a Halloween decoration, kid.”

            Sam glared at him. “I’m not hungry. I’m working on the case.”

            Dean closed the book without looking at it. “Study later. Eat now.” He raised his voice by an octave and pursed his lips. “You can’t help anyone if you pass out from hunger in the middle of the courtroom.”

            This time Sammy did laugh, at least a little. “Alright, fine. But only because you sound like my boss.”

            “Your boss sounds like a sensible man. Way too smart to be a lawyer.”

            Sammy slipped the book into his bag and the pair left, finding a proper diner in East Palo Alto that could give them what they needed.

            Dean looked around. “So you really like it out here.”

            Sam relaxed a little. “I’ve got a roof over my head – the same roof on a regular basis – and almost no one ever tries to kill me.” He cracked a grin. “It’s kind of awesome. It’s too bad you didn’t come while the cafeteria was open. It’s all you can eat.”

            “You’re so losing out on that deal, Sammy.” Dean forced a smile.

            “First time I saw it I thought of you.” Sam looked away. “I remember thinking, ‘Damn, I wish Dean was here. He’d think this was heaven.’ They’ve even got a burger station.”

            Dean swallowed past the lump in his throat. He remembered those messages. “A burger station, huh? Any good?”

            “I couldn’t say. They’ve got a massive salad bar, and everything’s always fresh.” Sam’s smile was a little more restrained this time. “A lot of the other kids complain about dorm food, like it’s this big travesty. I don’t know. It tastes fine and it’s always there. There’s plenty of it. I mean sometimes Zach eats all of the waffles at breakfast –“

            “There’s waffles at breakfast? Every day?” Dean couldn’t help but lean forward.

            “If you want ‘em.” Sam toyed with his oatmeal. “It’s nice. There’s a gym, too. I was going a lot before the thing, with the owl-men.”

            “Really. Sammy Winchester, voluntarily training. Who’d have thought it?”

            Sam glared. “I don’t mind working out a little. I didn’t like having it be the only thing I did. I like having it be on my terms. I’m not a soldier, I don’t like being treated like one.”

            Dean bit the inside of his cheek. “Dad needs us, Sammy.”

            Sam sighed, and he looked old. “He needs you, Dean. He doesn’t need me, and he never did.” His mouth twitched in that funny expression he got – not a smile, not a frown, just a twitch, with the ends moving up and down in what seemed like almost a sadder expression than a frown. “And that’s… I mean, that’s okay.”

            “It’s not okay, Sammy.” Dean unclenched his fists. “And Dad does need you. He needs both of his sons at his back, helping him fight all of this evil that just dogs our family at every turn! How can you sit there after you’ve had a serial killer, who tried to reach out and touch Lucifer himself, ask for you by name and seriously believe that evil isn’t after our family?”

            “That’s not what I said, Dean. What I said is that Dad doesn’t need _me_ in his fight. He needs you. He’s probably made a lot more progress since I left, right? Not fettered by school –“

            “If you’d dropped out when he told you he’d have been a lot further along and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Dean clapped his hands over his mouth. “Shit, Sammy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –“

            “Sure you did, Dean. You meant exactly what you said, and that’s kind of my point too.” Now Sammy did look sad. “He didn’t need _me_ , he needed another you. And even when I was trying to be another you, it didn’t work. I was never good enough, and the reason I was never good enough was because I was trying to be someone I wasn’t.” He shrugged. “Maybe I could have been an okay hunter in my own way. Maybe not. But the fact is, I couldn’t have ever hunted with Dad. And he always resented me because Mom died in my nursery.”

            “That’s not true.” Dean gripped his fork like a weapon. “You take that back.”

            Sam just made a pissy face. “Dean, ask him yourself. You know it’s true. And there’s not much that can really be done about it at this point. Besides, I’ve found someplace for me now. Sure, I might not fit in all that well, but I love what I’m doing and I love having a roof over my head. I’m building the skills that I’ll need to make a difference in the world, to really help people. Just in a different way.”

            Dean got up and threw some bills on the table. “I need some air.”

            Sam hung his head as Dean stalked out. Dean couldn’t make time for Sam’s hurt feelings right now. Most of them were probably fake anyway. Who the hell did he think he was fooling with all of that, “Dad always resented me” bullshit anyway? How could he seriously believe that?

            Sammy had always been the favorite. Sammy was the one who got “taken care of.” Ever since Mom died, the constant refrain ringing through Dean’s ears had been, “Take care of Sammy.” And Dean had done it, too, mostly without complaining. Well, no more complaining than could be expected of a kid his age. He’d loved his little brother, and no one could claim that he’d half-assed the job.

            The thing was, John had never turned to anyone and said, “Take care of Dean.” No, his care and concern had all been for Sammy. So where the hell did Sam get off saying that John only needed/wanted/ cared about Dean?

            Sure, John rewarded Dean with more freedom, more praise. That was because Dean gave John what he wanted. Dean was a better hunter, that was just facts. Dean was a better soldier, too. If Sammy had ever bothered, just once, to think about what their dad needed and wanted, just buckled down and given their dad, who had given them everything, what he deserved, John would have been more than happy to shower him with praise and adoration.

            Okay. Well maybe not quite that much. But he’d have patted him on the shoulder and said, “Good job son.” Once or twice. Just like he had Dean. Damn it.

            Dean wandered around the shopping centers for a few hours before making his way back to the diner. Sam was nowhere to be found. Dean sent him an angry text, only to be reminded of the time. _I’m at home_ , Sam told hm. _Working on the case_.

            _Home._ The very word made a knot in Dean’s stomach. He was supposed to be Sammy’s home, damn it.


	6. Silent Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone loves a little fire on Christmas.

Sam

 

            Sam chewed on the end of a cheap pen as he pondered the problem before them. There was no way around destroying the Couch residence. Maybe they could find a witch somewhere, somehow, that had no particular axe to grind against the Winchesters, but Sam wouldn’t know where to start and he didn’t think that he wanted to open that can of worms. They’d owe that witch a favor, and besides, there was no guarantee that the witch wouldn’t be into the idea of chatting up high-level demons themselves.

            Besides, even without the demonic Blue Light Special going on, the place was a beacon for evil. Those copycat killers had gone into the place looking to kill, and they’d gone into the place looking to kill at the Couch site because it let them kill someplace that had a kind of grim significance. It took some of the responsibility out of the decision in their minds; made the temptation too much to resist.

            The thing was, Dean was the first person they’d suspect when the place went up, thanks to his having been caught snooping around the place once already. Sam hadn’t been exaggerating his concerns about that. He needed to come up with a plan, a way to make the place go up with no possibility of repair without implicating Dean in any way.

            Dean – Dean was good at torching places, and Dean _liked_ to torch places. Sometimes Sam wondered about that. Unfortunately Dean couldn’t be the one to put this place to the flames, and while Dean didn’t like to acknowledge it, Sam wasn’t exactly a slouch when it came to cleaning them out of crime scenes.

            While Dean was sulking off Sam’s words about their father and his preferences, Sam wrapped Dean’s present in newspaper and slipped it into his duffel. He’d open it whenever he got around to it, or not. Whatever.

            Dean came back later that night, pissed that Sam hadn’t sat in the diner waiting. “Anything could have happened, damn it!”

            Sam snorted. “Because I wasn’t alone for the past three months. Or all those times you and Dad used to ditch me to go hunt.”

            Maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to say, because Dean’s face went dark red. “You know what? Maybe I should go get a motel room.”

            “If that’s what you want to do.” Sam made himself shrug. “It’s your choice. But here’s what else I want to do.”

            Dean visibly wrestled with his fury and got himself under control. “Is this about the case?”

            “Yeah. I want for both of us to go to Dave and Buster’s tomorrow night after work.”

            Dean wrinkled his nose. “Seriously? Why would we do that?”

            “Because, Dean. Dave and Buster’s is full of security cameras, and I want you to be on each and every one of them. Then you’re going to give me the keys to the Impala.”

            “Oh hell no.”

            Sam kept his face neutral. “Fine. Then I’ll steal the keys to the Impala and go take care of the Couch place myself. I’ve got a plan.”

            Dean rolled his eyes. “Oh, he’s got a plan, he says. It’s just fine for him to go build a campfire or whatever, but when I do it rivers will flow with blood and dogs and cats will live together in harmony.”

            “Don’t be an overdramatic douche, Dean.” Sam shut down his laptop. “I already told you why you can’t be the one to burn it down. We need you to be on camera, interacting with people, sleazing at cocktail waitresses –“

            “You’ve never actually been inside a Dave and Buster’s, have you?” Dean flicked a paper triangle at him.

            “Not as such, no. Not while it was open, anyway. Not the point. We have to be able to completely eliminate you as a suspect.” Sam scratched at his arm. How hard was this? Was Dean so enthralled by the four walls and three meals thing that he _wanted_ to go to jail?

            “So _you_ become a suspect?”

            “Well, no. I’m going to be there with you for a little while. Then I’m going to make it look like an accident, with a homeless guy trying to keep warm. They won’t have a reason to look past that, trust me.”

            “Trust me, he says.” Dean rolled his eyes. “You’re the one with the free ride who’s going to lose it when he gets sent up for arson.”

            Sam grimaced. Yeah, if he got caught this was going to suck, a lot. It just meant that he needed to not get caught.

            Work the next day was pretty much empty. Two days before Christmas, he guessed he could understand that. A lot of people took the day off, and Sam found himself reviewing chain of evidence documentation. It wasn’t the most exciting work he’d ever done, but it had to get done and he’d certainly done worse. At least this was indoors in the warm.

            The work also let him sneak a peek at the evidence from the Couch house. It looked like people at the crime scene had gotten as much evidence as they were going to get; everything had been documented thoroughly and no technicians had been back to the house since the first day. He probably wouldn’t be risking any court cases when he lit it up to night.

            That night, he and Dean headed over to Dave and Buster’s. Sam had broken into one when he’d been a kid, out of a combination of boredom and need, but he’d never been in one during operating hours. His first impression was horror. It was like Plucky Pennywhistles’s, but with a bar.

            Dean touched his shoulder, and Sam relaxed. This wasn’t Plucky’s. There weren’t any clowns. There wasn’t a ball pit. It was just a big, loud arcade that served booze and pizza. He could do this, at least for an hour or two.

            Dean relaxed into his role fairly easily. Sam knew that he would. Dean had a lot of difficulty when it came to socializing with civilians, at least under normal circumstances, but when it came to bars Dean was king of the hill. He might not be a big fan of places like Dave and Busters, might think they were too clean-cut for him, but at the end of the day it was still Dean’s natural environment and nothing could really take that away.

            It was an amazing thing to see, really. Dean was decent at Pop-a-Shot and he cleaned up on Skee-Ball. Sam had rarely been allowed to accompany his brother to the arcades when they’d been kids, because they were “too dangerous” or because having a “geek like you would just cramp my style, man.” (Which, Sam wouldn’t deny, would have been true. Every kid deserved some space from their siblings, after all.) Seeing Dean like this was a marvel, and Sam almost wished he could just sit back, relax and enjoy it.

            He couldn’t, though. He took the Impala’s keys out of Dean’s jacket pocket and carefully crept out of the venue, driving the short distance to the Couch’s neighborhood and parking a few streets away. Then he got to work.

            The place had been boarded up in a frankly pathetic attempt to make it more secure against further copycats. It didn’t work, of course, just like it hadn’t worked any of the other times they’d tried the same thing. Sam carefully pried one of the plywood coverings off a back window, let himself in and replaced it.

            He didn’t like the feeling of being alone in here.

            God, the place reeked of sulfur. Sam knew what that smell meant. Dad might not believe in demons but Sam knew they were real. He might not know a whole lot about them, but he didn’t need to know much to know that they were creatures with which he didn’t want to tangle.

            _Sam._

           He didn’t so much hear the voice as feel it, deep inside his head. Was this what the copycats had felt? God, no wonder they’d opened right up to him. He wasn’t any better than they were, after all. Maybe he dressed up his own filth under the name of self-defense or necessity, but he knew, deep down, what he was. Sam was a monster. He could only destroy, never build, never heal, never help.

            He might as well give in.

            Sam closed his eyes and prayed. _God, help me. Please give me the strength to get through this. Let me heal this place, let me make it safe for Your people. I don’t want to hurt anyone._

            The disgust and despair subsided, and Sam got to work.

            First, he pulled out the prayer of consecration. It wasn’t much, but he figured if he could do something to cleanse the land, even a little bit, then it would be for the greater good. He’d used it before, after all. A few sage bundles couldn’t hurt either. This wasn’t the typical method used for smudging with sage, but Sam couldn’t get away with doing this right and he figured he might as well toss a little bit in for good measure.

            Then, Sam went into the basement and turned on the gas.

            It didn’t take long for him to finish the job. He put the Coleman lantern on, and left it, managing to break it just enough that it wasn’t safe anymore. Then he turned on the stove and the furnace. Then Sam got out of the building as fast as he could. He had time, but why take chances. He scurried back to his entry space and carefully replaced the plywood.

            He’d gotten back to the Impala before the explosion shook the neighborhood.

            Bill called him into the office the next morning and told him what happened. He said that it looked like a homeless guy had tried to squat in there and sent the place up by accident. “I can’t say that I’m all that broken up by it,” he said after a moment. “There was something about that place… It attracted evil, you know? As long as it stood, freaks were going to come there and try to make themselves part of the legend. We’d been trying to get the estate to tear it down for fifteen years, ever since we noticed the pattern, but they wouldn’t.”

            Sam shrugged. He didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty, even though he’d reduced the place to rubble and put the neighbors out of their homes for the night as a precaution. No one had been hurt – well, okay, a firefighter had twisted an ankle on a hose – but no one had been seriously hurt and only the Couch place had been damaged. The heirs would get a hefty settlement from the insurance company, which was more than they should have gotten considering that they’d left the place standing there as an attractive nuisance calling out for demons and the Devil. “I guess it’s for the best, then. I mean, a fire in the middle of a populated area is kind of dangerous but it was just an accident, one of the risks of having an abandoned building just sitting vacant like that. Hopefully that homeless person got out safely.”

            Bill grimaced. “Yeah; I’d hate to think about running around the streets homeless at all, never mind homeless with untreated injuries and burns. Is your brother still in town, Sam?”

            “Yes, sir. We went out to Dave and Buster’s last night.” Sam smiled. “It was nice to see him cut loose a little, you know? There wasn’t much time for that when we were kids.”

            Bill relaxed a little and drank from his ever-present coffee cup. “That’s a good thing, then. I’m glad you don’t have to spend your Christmas alone.”

            They did catch the latest copycat killer, on Christmas Eve, at about ten in the morning. The killer was a woman, about thirty years old, and a nurse. Sam didn’t care about her story anymore. He knew that the house was cleansed, that the spell was broken and the case was closed. Police caught her red-handed, trying to kidnap an addict from a detox center where she worked, and DNA matched what was found under the fingernails of the still-unnamed victim they’d found last week. She confessed, that day, in front of Sam and Bill and everyone else, and Bill was so happy about the situation that he let Sam go home early.

            Dean wanted to celebrate the end of a successful hunt. Sam couldn’t deny him, wouldn’t have even if he could. It was such a little thing that he could give his brother, and sure Dean would rather have his dad by his side as he went to a dive bar and kicked up his heels or whatever. Sam couldn’t give him that, couldn’t stop Dad from taking off and leaving Dean behind or whatever had gone down to have Dean showing up on his doorstep. But he could go to the bar with Dean, sit and laugh at Dean’s corny jokes. He could nurse a beer while Dean poured back shot after shot. He could be happy for Dean when Dean found someone to spend a few hours with on Christmas Eve.

            Dean didn’t need to know that the beer in front of Sam when Dean got back was still the same beer that he’d been drinking when Dean left with Lizzie. Dean didn’t need to know that Sam had spent the time Dean had spent getting laid lurking in the corner with his phone. He got a few texts – from Brady, from Harris, from Zach, from Luis. Meli texted him too; he needed to tell her what had happened with the Couch house. Her great-grandmother had been invaluable in helping him to understand the spell that had been worked.

            When Dean got back, they played a little bit of pool. Sam yielded up his cue readily enough; Dean needed the money more than he did. Sam played a little bit of darts instead. He didn’t play much, just enough that Dean wouldn’t feel like Sam was staring at him.

            Later, they went back home. Sam fell asleep almost easily, secure in the presence of his brother.

            When Dean’s phone rang at six in the morning, Sam didn’t need to hear his brother’s quick “Yes, sir,” to know who it was or what he wanted. Having Dean here was too good to last. Sure, it hadn’t all been easy. There had been a lot of tension, and there had been times that Sam had been ready to tear his hair out. But at least he’d had his brother with him, known his brother was safe.

            Dean hung up the phone and looked at Sam. “I’ve got to go. That was –“

            “Dad. Yeah. I get it.”

            “I’ll give you a hand moving the bed back to the other guy’s room.”

            “Thanks.” What else could he say? He couldn’t convince Dean to stay.   Trying would just piss Dean off, and he’d leave on a bad note instead of on the good note that was their celebration.

            They stripped the spare bed and moved it back into Brady’s room. His roommate would never even know the difference. Then Dean availed himself of the excellent water pressure and never-ending hot water one last time, got dressed and headed outside.

            “It was good to see you, Dean.”

            Dean didn’t even look at Sam as he opened the door to the Impala. “Yeah. You too.” He frowned. “You messed with my mirrors!”

            Sam smirked, even though he wasn’t really feeling it. “I was fleeing the scene, Dean. Of an arson.”

            “You can’t mess with a man’s mirrors, Sammy. That’s like rearranging his internal organs!” Dean sat down and re-set his mirrors to his liking. “I guess I’ll see you around then.”

            “I guess.”

            “Merry Christmas, Sammy.”

            “Yeah, Dean. You too.”

            Dean drove off, leaving Sam standing in the parking lot.

 

John

 

            It took John and Tara about an hour to find a place to get rid of Andrew Turley’s body. John would have been happier if they’d managed to build a proper pyre and salt and burn the remains properly, but that wasn’t always possible and even John knew that. Instead, they broke into a hospital and stuffed him into the boiler with a handful of salt. The whole thing took four hours, between finding a place to get the job done and doing it in such a way as to not get caught, and by the time they were done it had gone dark.

            They tried to track down the address of the old farm that Taurus had gotten for them, but by that point it was too late. The Jawbone Devil, or Cain, or Mr. Edward Willoughby as the lease on the property claimed, had cleared out not twenty-four hours before they arrived. There was still food in the refrigerator, there were still cans upon cans of corn on the shelves, but all personal items had disappeared. Even the trash had been taken out.

            “What the hell is up with all of this corn?” Tara asked, shaking her head. “It’s like the guy has an obsession.”

            “Took the hives with him, too.” John made a face. “That can’t have been fun.” He pointed to the stakes out back, where the hives had clearly once stood.

            “At least we know we’re on the right track.” Tara came over to the window to stand beside him. “Where do you think he wound up?”

            John shook his head in disgust. “He could be anywhere in Missouri. We spooked him and he’ll have gone to ground completely. Hell, for all I know he might have left the state entirely.”

            “It wasn’t us.” Tara put a hand on his bicep. “He left yesterday, before we even got to Poplar Bluff.”

            “Yeah, but if he heard through the grapevine or whatever that we were looking for him he’d know to get out of Dodge. I mean, the thing possessing Andrew heard about it, right?” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Damn it. So much wasted time.”

            Tara squeezed his bicep. “Maybe not all wasted.”

            John hesitated. He should keep chasing after the Jawbone Devil. He knew, though, that it was futile. The guy was in the wind, and the trail the man had laid down over the centuries was useless now. And what would be the harm? They were both adults, both willing. He turned and leaned into Tara’s space, joining their lips together.

            They left “Cain’s” house together, unlocked and open. The guy clearly wasn’t coming back, and if someone wanted all that corn then they were welcome to it.

            They used her room; neither was all that keen on using his, considering what had happened there. Neither had a lot of patience just now. John was riding the wave of his disappointment and his fears about Sammy, and Tara – well, who knew what was going through her head, but she seemed just as hungry and desperate as John was, and he wasn’t going to complain about that.

            Sometimes he wondered what had become of the man he used to be. His lovemaking with Mary had always been gentle and tender, sometimes playful, but always loving. At least, that was the way he remembered it. After she’d been killed, he’d been lonely, and sure, nothing could replace her but he’d had needs. He’d changed, though. His partners went away satisfied, but no one could accuse him of tenderness anymore.

            Tara didn’t seem to need that, though. She took just as much as she gave, and she wasn’t just some fainting flower that needed to be coaxed into enjoyment of the sexual act. She knew exactly what she wanted and exactly how she wanted it.

            Sometimes, in between bouts, she slept. John tried to. He managed to doze off a time or two. He didn’t begrudge her the rest. After all, she’d just been along for the ride, for the most part. She hadn’t been confronted with the reality of all of her deepest fears about her family.

            John still wasn’t sold on the existence of demons. He believed in something, but he wasn’t sure he could call it demonic. Whatever Andrew had been, it had been evil, though; evil, and powerful, and it had a plan for Sammy. A plan that involved Sammy being evil himself.

            God. He’d known that Sammy was off. He’d known that Sammy wasn’t quite right, had accepted that a while ago. But this – this took the cake, really. Whatever had happened in that nursery all those years ago had tainted his son, Mary’s son, turned him into something that evil sons of bitches wanted to follow and be on the right side of.

            Was Sammy even human?

            He’d wondered, sometimes. He’d had his suspicions over the years. All sorts of things and people had assured him how _special_ Sammy was. What did it all mean?

            One thing that John knew for sure: he couldn’t let Dean stay with Sam for another minute.

            It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Dean. He did. Dean, as the eternally-meddling Jim Murphy had pointed out, had bent over backwards time and time again to demonstrate his loyalty. Dean would stand by John no matter what. But if Sam was caught up in some kind of organized, evil plot – whether by his own choice or by the design of those around him – John couldn’t take the risk of having Dean get wrapped up in that web. He had to cut Dean free now, before he was in too deep.

            But what he couldn’t do was tip Dean off. He couldn’t tip anyone off. Not until he knew more.

            John looked for jobs in between romps with Tara all through Christmas Eve. Finally, he found what he was looking for on Christmas morning. He called Dean right away, stepping into the bathroom for privacy. “Dean, I’ve found a job for us down in Douglas, Georgia. Meet up with me at the first motel in the phone book, as soon as you can get there.”

            He didn’t need to listen for Dean’s sleepy-sounding “Yes, sir.” He knew it would come, and was already hanging up the phone as he heard it coming through. Instead, he went ahead and returned to Tara. She was warm, and just waking up. It would take Dean three days and change to get to Georgia from Palo Alto, assuming that he drove for twelve hours at a stretch. It would only take John one.

            He left Tara two days later. He promised he would call. They both knew that he wouldn’t. It was a nice idea, but the life didn’t allow for that. Not unless they were both working a job, and everyone knew that John Winchester worked alone.

            He’d have to find another way to kill the thing that had taken his Mary from him. In the meantime, he needed to protect Dean, and figure out what evil influence had come over Sam.

 

Dean

 

            Dean knew that Sam was disappointed when Dad called and woke them up on Christmas morning. Dad must not have known where he was, not exactly, because he didn’t say anything about Sam or anything like that. He just said, “Dean, I’ve found a job for us down in Douglas, Georgia. Meet up with me at the first motel in the phone book, as soon as you can get there.” Typical Dad.

            And Dean had just said, “Yes, sir.” Because that was what you said to Dad. It was the only response. Dad wouldn’t have called if he didn’t need Dean, and if Dad needed Dean then Dean had to go. He couldn’t let Dad down, not with everything else that had happened to the man. Every other crushing disappointment in his life.

            But he could see the disappointment in Sam’s hooded, shadowed eyes, the way that Sam couldn’t meet Dean’s eyes as he sat up in bed. Maybe the kid was growing up a little though, because he didn’t say anything. He just accepted it, all clipped words and shuttered eyes.

            Maybe he just wasn’t interested in keeping Dean around.

            That was probably it, Dean reflected. After all, it had been so damn easy for Sammy to walk away from Dean. He probably didn’t want Dean there at all. It wasn’t like he’d asked to come back, or shown any other sign that he missed being part of their family. Hell, he’d openly said that he was learning to help people _now_ , like hunting wasn’t helping people!

            He wasn’t going to think about Sammy’s words about Dad, because those were all bullshit. Sammy had walked away from his family when they needed him and that was all there was to it. He wasn’t going to let himself feel bad about leaving the kid on Christmas day. It wasn’t even like Sam _liked_ Christmas. The kid was a Grinch if ever there was one.

            “Merry Christmas, Sammy,” Dean said, and took off, leaving Sammy standing alone in the parking lot scratching at his arm.

            He stopped for the night in Winslow, Arizona. Hell if he didn’t get a room with two queens, just out of habit. Damn it, Sammy. Even that little taste, that little bit of exposure, had been enough to set him back like this. He couldn’t afford to take any more jobs out in Palo Alto, not if he was going to stay sane. It screwed him up too badly. Next time Pastor Jim called with a job out there, he’d tell him to give it to someone else, Caleb or Joshua or Bobby Singer.

            It being Christmas Day, nothing much was open. There was a truck stop where Dean could get greasy food, which he brought back to his lonely room. He unpacked and got ready to settle in for the night with an old copy of _On the Road_ , when his hands brushed across something unfamiliar in his duffel.

            He pulled out a package, carefully wrapped n newspaper with perfect, crisp corners. _Damn it, Sammy,_ he thought again. He opened the present and pulled out the world’s ugliest Christmas sweater, wrapped around a selection of skin mags.

            Sammy had known. Somehow Sammy had known that Dean wouldn’t stay for Christmas. Dean shook his head and turned off the light. Damn sentimental kid.

 


End file.
